Opioid Deal Finalized But Victims Get Squat!

Say you're the CEO of a heroin importation and wholesale distributorship company named Junk, Smack, & White Horse Inc. Life is good. 

You have begun vertical integration with overseas suppliers and some smaller dealers, bringing them into your conglomerate. 

You still have large competitors (those disrespectful muyerfuyer SOBs at Mexican Brown & China White LLC are testing your patience) but at least when police crackdowns occur you're not the only target.  

You face the minor irritations of customers dying, prostituting themselves, robbing others to pay for your product, becoming homeless, abusing their loved ones, and becoming unproductive junkies, but as any cook will attest, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Anyway, your customers don't live in your neighborhood. Your bank account, stock portfolio, homes, yachts, cars, children's private schools, and wife's dresses and jewelry let you know it's all worth it. 

Black Man Insulted And Detained For Trying To Cash His Paycheck

Something that is ongoing in American culture is that people from just about every walk of life think and behave as if Black people, specifically Black men, are less intelligent lower forms of life that deserve absolutely no respect and are almost certainly guilty of something.

I don't think it's possible to find a honest Black man who hasn't run across this attitude in one form or another. 
This never ending hate and contempt is something that almost certainly leads to greater hypertension, stress, and all of the health concerns that go along with that. This racism could be something like a judge mistaking a Black lawyer for a criminal defendant, Bill O'Reilly "joking" that the professor Marc Lamont Hill looks like a cocaine dealer, or co-workers constantly mistaking one Black man for the only other Black man in the department when the two look nothing alike and are far apart in age. 

It is what it is. This started long before I got here and will continue after I'm gone. But one really egregious example of this recently came to light in Minnesota.

Joe Morrow, a Minnesota man, was the victim of what many call “banking while Black” after being put in handcuffs after attempting to cash his paycheck inside a U.S. Bank branch in suburban Minneapolis last October.
Morrow told KSTP-TV reporters that despite having an account with the bank, employees at a branch in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, “were all looking at me and just staring at me and then looking at the check and then staring at me again. And I’m already knowing what they’re thinking — that the check fake.” 

Morrow, who moved to Minnesota from Mississippi last year and worked as an “order picker,” said the incident began well before the police had arrived at the bank where he attempted to cash a check for roughly $900. 

The man said he was informed by the bank’s manager, John Askwith, that the check was fraudulent and that “you people always coming in here with fake checks.” I work there, bro. And I’m going to report you too, bro, this is racial,” Morrow was heard saying calmly, without expletives, to the manager before he was cautioned about his allegations of racial profiling. When Sgt. Justin Pletcher arrived, police body camera footage showed Morrow already in Askwith’s office, leaning back in a chair, hands folded. The 23-year-old maintained that the check was indeed real.

GM Lordstown Plant Closing

When people are discouraged, prevented and/or excluded from serving in positions of power they often show an intense, even obsessive, interest in putting one of their own in the Big Seat, however it is defined. And the people who have one of their own in the Big Seat, often show an intense, even obsessive, interest in keeping that spot, even if they receive little to no material benefit from having one of "theirs" in the top spot. This is just human nature. I don't think it will ever truly change. 

However it continues to be worthwhile to point out over and over again that simply putting a black face in a high place or putting someone in charge who can wear skirts and heels instead of pants without changing the power structure and the nature of the economic relationship is ultimately not worthwhile-at least not worthwhile for anyone except the individual who is making the big money in the top spot. Mary Barra is the Chairman (Chairwoman?) and CEO of GM. 

She is also the first woman to hold that position at GM and any other global automaker. When she ascended to the spot this was heralded as a good thing for women executives, women employees, women in general and the nation in general. Barra makes $21 million/yr in salary. I am sure she has the stock options, deferred compensation, retirement plans, bonus incentives and all of the other benefits that any  major league executive in her position would receive.

Barra also oversaw the recent announced closing of the GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio. This will devastate that community and increase the problems of opiate addiction, homelessness, economic inequality, job loss and other issues that plague American workers. The union contract GM signed apparently both forbade closing the planet and/or required additional worker benefits if the plant was closed.

Open Workplaces Stink!

I work in the information technology field. I recently spent a few days in training. There's a new implementation process being rolled out for IT employees. This process will supposedly reduce the time elapsed between the point that a change request (user request, production breakdown, new project, etc.) is made and the point when the change request is completed. This will theoretically save the company time and money- something that upper management is always looking to do- as well as making workers more productive, also a key management goal. It's also supposed to reduce worker stress. 

One big change required is the virtual elimination of worker privacy from the environment. Most people will no longer have offices or even semi-private cubicles. Everyone except the most important executives or managers (at least three pay grades up from me) will sit at open tables.

This will allow people to share work. Sharing work is not only encouraged, it's required. No one will be allowed to analyze problems or write code by themselves or without real time peer review. Almost all work will be done by groups of two or more people. Team members will share pc's and monitors. Anything showing on "your" monitor will also show on two or three other monitors. In order to further limit "distractions", private phones linked to a particular worker will be discouraged and phased out. Instead there will be conference rooms for any phone conversations. Everyone will have multiple daily meetings where they stand up in front of their department and list their current accomplishments, remaining tasks, and areas where they might need help.

I don't doubt that some of these changes could result in more robust solutions produced sooner. And that is good. However as the old joke goes just because it takes one woman nine months to deliver a baby doesn't mean that you can hire nine women and deliver a baby in one month.

Staying Awake At The Office

I think that many people can probably relate to the below video. Whether it's due to an overheated or underheated room, profoundly boring speakers or discussion topics, too much or too little to eat at lunch, advancing age, lack of sleep or just generalized frustration that their life is slowly being wasted on tedium, I have over the years seen more than a few people struggle to stay awake in corporate meetings. This has of course never ever ever happened to me because I am an enthusiastic corporate drone. Or something.

Handouts for Billionaires: Dan Gilbert's $600 Million Deal

Some people make a strong argument for government intervention, whether in the form of tax breaks, incentives, subsidies, or outright cash transfers to help poor or middle class people get on their feet, get job training, start a business, get an education, buy a house or (ahem) get some health care. 

The devil is in the details of course but if you're living paycheck to paycheck and/or can't immediately put your hands on $1 million in cash, then I won't begrudge you some form of government assistance. There but for the grace of God go I and yada yada yada. If you are a rich person with regards to income or more importantly in regards to wealth (the top 1% households had a little over $10 million in net worth in 2016) then I will suggest that you don't need much assistance from any level of government. You likely work for yourself but even if you don't it's rare that the loss of your job will have you sweating and panicking over a missed paycheck in two weeks. There are some people for whom $10 million is nothing special. They might drop that much on weekend gambling ventures, jewelry for their wives or mistresses, rare cars, vacation homes or child support.

A billion is one thousand million. That's ONE THOUSAND MILLION. If you are worth one billion then you or yours don't want for much. Dan Gilbert owns Quicken Loans, Rock Financial, a few casinos and of course the Cleveland Cavaliers. Dan Gilbert is Michigan's richest resident, and likely Ohio's as well when he's in that state. In 2017 Gilbert was number 91 on the Forbes 400 list. Only a few Americans have more money than Gilbert. Dan Gilbert's net worth is approximately 6.3 Billion dollars or to put it another way, 6300 million. There's little that Gilbert couldn't buy or invest in if he so chose. Money is not a limiting factor for Gilbert. So I'm having trouble understanding why the State of Michigan has decided to give a $600 million subsidy to Gilbert for a real estate deal.

Dan Gilbert, the billionaire who has overhauled downtown Detroit by resurrecting historic buildings, sealed one of his biggest Motor City deals yet by getting final approval Tuesday for a $618 million tax incentive plan.

I'm Off The Clock!!!!

I previously wrote this post about among other things, how this movie scene resonated with me. I work in a financial sector of the IT arena. Way back in the day I was part of the on call rotation for an accounting system. If anything went wrong with the system after hours your pager would go off. If you didn't respond in a timely manner then you'd get a phone call. 

If the production support person hadn't heard from you in fifteen minutes they would contact the backup on call person and/or your boss. One big problem I had with this entire initiative was that initially our team didn't have the budget to fix the processes that were most likely to cause problems. Because our portfolio of responsibilities was huge, usually when someone was on call he or she would only know his or her given area of expertise. So when a particular accounting update process went bad the person on call might only know the reporting piece. 

So s/he would end up calling the accounting update specialist, who wasn't on call and wasn't going to be happy to be contacted at 2:30 AM. The most critical jobs always ran late at night. Eventually, via cross training and a boss that obtained enough funds to code fixes and upgrade databases, we reduced the frequency and intensity of problems. But it still was unpleasant to be on call. We were on salary so we didn't get any extra money if we had to tune a database or restart a reporting job at 2 AM. Perhaps if the company had to pay us more to be on call our previous boss would have pulled her head from her posterior and taken earlier steps to solve issues. I was reminded of all this history because in New York City there is a proposal to restrict the ability of employers to require workers to do work or answer emails from home after business hours.

Taiyesha Baker Fired from Indiana University Health

As has been discussed previously many times you do not necessarily have First Amendment protections if you say or write something widely considered to be offensive and your employer lets you go. This may get a tad more complicated if your employer is a public (governmental) entity and not a private one. But even with public employers, if you run afoul of laws or employer policies regarding speech that is harassing or hateful you can often find yourself unemployed. The First Amendment is about disallowing the government from preventing you from saying something disagreeable. It's about preventing the government from putting you in prison or fining you for your speech. You are free to say whatever you like. But your employer is also free to decide that your speech is not something with which it wants to be associated. Just as social media has made people more comfortable with sharing a lot of private and personal information, many people seem to forget that social media is NOT you talking to your spouse, relatives, close friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, or even long term business associates. Many of these people probably share some of your world views. And even those who don't usually won't take something you told or wrote to them in confidence and tell everyone without your permission. But when you post something on social media you're sharing it with the world.

Taiyesha Baker, a former nurse at Indiana University Health, apparently forgot that when you're not independently wealthy you occasionally have to consider whether the entire world needs to hear your unedited opinion on sensitive issues.

June Chu and Debbie Massey: Foul Behavior or Free Speech???

People across the political spectrum dislike the free speech concept. They claim that some speech, which is always speech they oppose, is not so much speech as it is weaponized hate or discrimination, which is not protected by the First Amendment. Others even drop that fig leaf and argue that "hate speech" in any form can be banned, even if it has no provable impact on anyone. Although the most vocal advocates of this approach tend to be on the left, witness the brouhahas over right-wing intellectuals speaking at colleges, arguably many of the most powerful advocates of this approach are on the right. There is a right-wing movement to criminalize advocacy of BDS (Boycott/Divest/Sanction the state of Israel) in America. So it goes. Humans being human, we will always be tempted to outlaw viewpoints we don't like. Limits on institutional ability to criminalize, punish, prohibit or restrain speech usually are only legally present on government institutions. Private institutions can set their own rules. And they often do. The government can't jail me for writing something nasty about my employer. But my employer, upon reading my screed, might decide that it wanted to fire me. Right now. And if I am in an at will employment state there's probably not too much I could do about that. 

Two recent events illustrated how someone's honest opinions got them in trouble. Well it might not be so much their honest opinions as the disdain that lay beneath them.😒

Federal Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Al Sharpton and Comcast

The Reverend Al Sharpton, whatever his other gifts may be, is not a particularly adept television host. His cadence grates. To this Midwesterner he usually sounds as if he's about to punch someone in the mouth. Sharpton mispronounces words and misses cues to open or close segments. He yells all the time. Sharpton's only two emotions are surprise or outrage. He seems to be in a perennial search for the teleprompter. We posted about all this before but Sharpton's shortcomings are obvious to anyone that watches his show for longer than five minutes. For these reasons and many others, Sharpton's ratings on MSNBC have mostly been bad. I can't blame him too much for this. If someone offered to pay me many multiples of my current salary to do something for which I was poorly qualified I might well take the money and cry all the way to the bank. Sharpton has to this point survived the latest reshuffling of talent at MSNBC which saw Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow lose their even less popular shows. This ability to survive purges and even the ability to get hired in the first place had some people shaking their heads and muttering about conspiracy theories. Others laughed at the sheer audacity and tenacity of Sharpton. It takes a lot to survive as a public figure in this world and Sharpton has it. Although his television show is an ongoing dumpster fire I appreciate that Sharpton brings attention to some situations that would otherwise go unnoticed. However someone just recently revealed his belief that Sharpton's hiring and survival at MSNBC was more about corporate payoffs and hiring a spook to sit by the door than it was about Sharpton's hosting talents. So this man filed a $20 billion dollar federal lawsuit.

You may, if you are a certain age, remember Byron Allen as a comedian and co-host of the show Real People. That was a very long time ago indeed but unlike some Hollywood "wasn't that the guy from so-n-so? " fading talent, the Detroit born Allen successfully made the switch into management and ownership. He owns Entertainment Studios, a television distribution and production company which among other things created Comedy.tv and Cars.tv. Allen and an organization named the National Association of African American Owned Media are suing Comcast, Sharpton's National Action Network, the NAACP, The Urban League, Time Warner and Al Sharpton as an individual, among other entities. The crux of the lawsuit is that Comcast/Time Warner has refused to do business with Entertainment Studios (and other black companies) because it is 100% Black owned. Apparently Sharpton comes in for attack because according to the complaint he and other civil rights organizations entered into voluntary diversity agreements with Comcast/Time Warner which were designed to give the appearance that Comcast/Time Warner was fair minded, when in fact they were not. In short Reverend Al was allegedly selling indulgences for Comcast/Time Warner's allegedly racist business practices. According to this accusation, Comcast, having been criticized in the past for exclusionary actions, decided it was cheaper to buy off Reverend Al Sharpton and associated fellow travelers than to actually change the practices in dispute.

Of the approximately $10 billion in content fees that Comcast pays to license channels and advertise each year, less than $3 million is paid to 100% African American–owned media. Even the token payments Comcast makes to 100% African American–owned media companies are a charade. Comcast pays minimal amounts to license and distribute the Africa Channel, which is owned and operated by a former Comcast/NBC-Universal executive/insider and one of the architects of the MOUs Comcast uses to perpetuate its racial discrimination in contracting.

In connection with its 2010 bid to acquire NBC-Universal, Comcast was criticized for its refusal to do business with 100% African American–owned media. In response, Comcast entered into what it termed “voluntary diversity agreements,” i.e., memoranda of understanding (“MOUs”), with non-media civil rights groups, including the other Defendants herein: NAACP; National Urban League; Al Sharpton; and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. 

Defendants NAACP, National Urban League, Al Sharpton and National Action Network entered into the MOUs in order to facilitate Comcast’s racist practices and policies in contracting—or, more accurately, refusing to contract—with 100% African American–owned media companies. The MOUs are a sham, undertaken to whitewash Comcast’s discriminatory business practices.

To obtain support for the NBC-Universal acquisition and for its continued racist policies and practices, Comcast made large cash “donations” to the non-media groups that signed the MOUs. For example, Comcast has paid Reverend Al Sharpton and Sharpton’s National Action Network over $3.8 million in “donations” and as salary for the on-screen television hosting position on MSNBC that Comcast awarded Sharpton in exchange for his signature on the MOUs, another blatant example of conflict of interest. 

Read the (lengthy) full complaint here

I have no idea if the allegations which Allen and others are making in this complaint are accurate. This may be something utterly frivolous which will be tossed from the court system. I do know however that it's often important not just to look at the people in front of a camera or the individual people at the lower levels of the organization to see if Black people are getting a fair shake. It's just as important to look at the higher ups, at the decision makers. It's important to see who's making the contracting decisions and if black companies are getting a piece of the pie. Are business decisions about hiring, grooming, and contracting made so that everyone has a fair chance to compete? There are some corporations which are happy to hire a few black executives here or there over the years but which consistently avoid business to business relations with black companies. Although Allen has a few zingers listed in the complaint (a white executive saying that they didn't want to create another Bob Johnson) for the most part the allegations (if true) are examples of how  bloodless racism can work in the corporate world. Few people are going to run around screaming racial slurs or putting up signs. Well, few people compared to forty years ago do those sorts of things. It's just that business decisions that are made which always seem to leave the same people holding the dirty end of the stick. Again, this could all be nonsense. Allen's own company has come under serious attack for hostility to unions and low pay to performers and creators. Allen's said that in a previous interview that he sees his company as "the Wal-mart of television". FWIW, Allen has also stated that nobody ever gave him anything. 

Giving a tour of Entertainment Studios’ newly leased 75,000-square-foot production space in Culver City, Allen says he built his empire from scratch, in part because, as a black man, he had to. “Over the 20 years, I’ve seen my white counterparts have access to enormous amounts of capital, and in 20 years nobody’s ever offered me a nickel,” he says. “It made me stronger, it made me work with different disciplines.”
LINK

To conclude, again this could be a pure shakedown initiated by Allen using Sharpton's name for publicity. Sharpton certainly thinks so. He said that the lawsuit was frivolous at best. He also claims that his organization did not receive $4 million in donations from Comcast but instead less than $1 million. Well. Detractors and even supporters of various advocacy organizations concerned with issues of race, gender, sexuality, animal rights etc. have stated that when an advocacy group accepts "donations" from the same organizations it is supposed to be monitoring, it can sometimes find itself politically neutered. Did this happen to Sharpton? Hmm. Is Allen just being a whiner? 

What are your thoughts?

Corporate Tax Deductions for Settlements, Fines and Damages

When you do something wrong and are punished for it by having money taken from you the purpose of that little exercise is to convince you not to break the law or violate the rules again. The size of the fine may vary depending on how serious the offense is, whether the person who is being fined is a first time offender, how much money the person who is being fined has, whether or not the person or institution levying the fine is in a bad mood that day or is looking to make an public example of some schmuck or a million other reasons. But the purpose of the fine remains the same regardless of whether you are an NFL player who doesn't like to talk to the media, an NBA player who publicly questions the integrity of the league or its referees, or a taxpayer who simply doesn't like paying his taxes when the city, state or country says that he must. For example, in my younger days (i.e four years ago) I used to consider posted speed limits on expressways as something more akin to suggestions than hard and fast rules. I certainly wasn't the only motorist inclined to do this. On some local expressways if you aren't doing at least 80 mph you just aren't trying. However, four years ago a friendly police officer stopped me to let me know that no, he for one really did take those speed limits seriously. He thought I should as well. To assist me in reaching this future goal he wrote out a ticket that had a fine which I found to be entirely too high. Well I suppose it had the desired effect. I got a radar detector and kept a closer lookout for cops. Most days I rarely drive more than 3-4 mph over the posted speed limit. I simply don't have the money to give away to a podunk municipality over nonsense like that.
But imagine if instead of having to pay the entire fine myself and wreak havoc in my monthly budget I could come to you and force you to pay a significant portion of that fine. You might protest that you weren't the big dummy who was driving significantly over the speed limit. I would respond with something along the lines of how we were all in this together. I would help you out if it came to it. So suck it up buttercup and hand over some cash. If you were forced to pay part of my penalty not only would you be upset (something I wouldn't care about that much to be honest) but more importantly the fine wouldn't be enough to deter my future behavior. Because the net fine to me would then be much lower I would be less likely to be deterred from speeding. That would be a really good deal for me. It might not be such a great deal for you or for the rest of society. The person who incurred the cost and broke the law/rules is not the one who is paying the cost.

When a Montana judge ordered Hyundai to pay $73 million in punitive damages last year to the families of two teenagers killed in a car crash, she found that the South Korean automaker had “recklessly” ignored scores of warnings over more than a decade about the steering defect blamed for the accident. But even if Hyundai is eventually forced to pay the full amount of the damages, the punishment could be substantially reduced through a tax loophole that permits the company to save millions of dollars by deducting any court-ordered punitive damages as an ordinary business expense. The result, critics say, is that taxpayers are in effect subsidizing corporate misconduct. 

Carmakers are far from the only companies that can exploit loopholes that allow them to lower their tax bill by deducting fines, forfeitures and other payments related to wrongdoing. Although the tax law forbids deductions for criminal fines and penalties owed to the government, other kinds of payments — to compensate victims or correct damages — are eligible for a tax deduction.  The rating agency Standard & Poor’s, which was accused of helping to cause the financial crisis with its inflated assessments of mortgage investments, is eligible to deduct half of the $1.37 billion settlement with state and federal prosecutors it agreed to this week, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer-oriented nonprofit. The result would be a roughly $245 million reduction in its tax bill, the research group calculated.  

At least 80 percent of the more than $42 billion that BP has paid out because of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people and spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico qualifies for a tax deduction, according to U.S. PIRG. That has saved an estimated $10 billion to $14 billion for the company. The exact amount is uncertain because of the lack of transparency, the group complained.  Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia and author of “Too Big to Jail,” said that BP was “asking taxpayers, in effect, to pay for the victim compensation fund it agreed to set up.”
LINK

So this is an incredibly good deal for companies which have to pay for wrongdoing. Not only do the company officers and owners generally avoid personal damages and/or prison time for misdeeds they even are able to avoid the full impact of the fine by getting the government (i.e. you) to help pay for it. Often they can get the fine or settlement reduced on appeal. It might not be such a great deal for you or for the rest of society. The person who incurred the cost and broke the law/rules is not the one who is paying the cost. That seems to violate basic fairness. This is another example of how our tax code and public perception of welfare leeches. This is why as we recently discussed one has to be careful when one reads about this or that inner-city ghetto or poor trailer park person "cheating" the system out of a few hundred dollars each month. Your disgust or contempt should be saved for the big dog who's crapping on the floor, not the little puppy. Corporations are cheating the government out of BILLIONS. Technically I shouldn't even use the term "cheating" as this is all quite legal. Moral outrage doesn't trump law. The fact that these tax code provisions are still in place proves the amount of power that corporations and their armies of lobbyists and attorneys can bring to bear. A great many of these mega corporations don't pay many, if any income taxes in the first place so this is just par for the course. Until enough people get angry enough to demand changes, these policies will continue. But to demand change you have to know what's going on behind closed doors and out in the open. This is why it's so important to read, inform yourself and get politically active.

President Obama Sells Out Workers

We all are hypocrites in one way or the other. It's just part of being human. Nobody is consistent across the board on everything. However I am amazed by the fact that the Obama Administration has managed to maintain so much support from labor and many members of the working class when it continues to display that it is not necessarily a big friend of the working class. Its rhetoric doesn't match its actions. One of the critical employee rights which we are supposed to have in this country, whether we are union or non-union, white collar or blue collar, is that if you work for someone else you should be paid for the time you're at work and the tasks you complete. There are a few marginal exceptions to this. The exempt professional worker usually does not automatically get time and a half overtime pay for more than 40 hours of work per week. Such pay might be made but it's much more likely to be compensated (if at all) in additional time off at some later date. Possibly. Maybe. It depends on your company's policy and boss's needs. Obviously in some professions, working 40 hours per week is considered slacking. You don't become partner at a law firm, trading boss at a hedge fund, or head surgeon at the hospital by only working 40 hrs each week. The flip side of that though is that if a salaried professional leaves early one day because they're sick or have a family emergency or just want to see a playoff baseball game, their next paycheck probably won't include a line item for pay docked. So in theory it balances out.

Still whether professional or not, if the company says you must do X as part of your job duties chances are you will do X as part of your job duties, if you want to continue getting paid. And getting paid is the key thing here. The company shouldn't be able to obtain work or time from you for free. Of course companies are amoral and increasingly want to do just that. And for some strange reason the Obama Administration is siding with the companies.
After his 12-hour shifts at an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Jesse Busk says, he and 200 other workers typically waited in line for 25 minutes to undergo a security check to see whether they had stolen any goods. Upset that the temp agency that employed him refused to pay workers for that time, Mr. Busk sued. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments about this hotly contested issue. The nation’s retailers are paying close attention because such security checks are common. The Supreme Court is to determine whether the check and related waiting time were part of Mr. Busk’s regular, compensable workday or, as the temp agency argues, were time after his workday and not compensable.

In its brief, the temp agency, Integrity Staffing Solutions, argues that the security check and the related waiting time are part of the “preliminary” or “postliminary” activities that are not compensable under the Portal-to-Portal Act, which Congress passed in 1947.  Mr. Busk’s lawyer, Mark R. Thierman, disagreed. “The antitheft check is integral and indispensable because the company said you have to do it,” he said. “If the company tells you to do it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s related to what else you do on the job.” The Obama administration has filed a brief backing Integrity Staffing. 

Some pro-labor groups voiced surprise that the administration was backing Integrity Staffing. “The administration says it’s time to put more money in the pockets of workers who work long hours with low pay,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel for the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for workers. “Their position in this case is contrary to what they’ve been saying.”

LINK

Ok. Let me get this straight. The company pays its workers chump change and then is concerned that some of the workers will make up the difference by "liberating" some company merchandise for resale. It's a reasonable worry. The company could address this problem by raising everyone's pay so that getting busted for stealing some crap from a warehouse wouldn't be worth anyone's trouble. Unrealistic I know. Well. What to do then? Ooh! Ohh! I know! I know!! The company could maintain its security procedures, demeaning and insulting though they are, and PAY the workers for the extra time that they are spending at work being shaken down for possible stolen goods. This search is part of their job. Mr. Busk could not say "No, I'm not going through those searches tonight" and reasonably expect to have a job the next morning. This is not something that was externally imposed by the municipal, federal or state government where the company and/or the subcontractor could argue that they had no responsibility. And no this is not something where the Obama Administration is being forced by those "wascally Rethuglicans" to do something which is against its better nature. The Obama Administration, in the form of the Labor and Justice Department, is siding with the U.S Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Litigation Center and several other pro-business anti-labor groups. If the President didn't want this he could use his celebrated pen and phone to tell Labor Secretary Perez and Attorney General Holder to withdraw Administration support from the company's side of this dispute. This really is a watershed moment. As much as anything else this tells you which side the Obama Administration is on when it comes to conflicts between capital and labor. Hint, not labor's.

As mentioned, under the logic being pushed by Integrity Staffing Solutions and the Obama Administration, a company could order an employee to do ANYTHING after or even during his shift and then refuse to pay the employee by claiming that the task was not integral to work. So a boss could theoretically order someone to go pick up his dry cleaning and then refuse to pay because after all, retrieving your supervisor's laundry is not really a key task. But if you don't you're fired. Right. If the Supreme Court sides with the company you will see many corporations transfer more and more unpaid tasks to workers under the fallacious idea that these tasks aren't integral. Worker income will continue to stagnate or fall. Corporate profits will continue to rise. Under the current Supreme Court who can predict what can happen. But I will bet that Scalia and Thomas will side with the company and with President Obama. 

What do you think the right thing to do here is?

Why has President Obama sided with the company?

Have you ever been in a situation where your employer tried to extract unpaid work?

Pay your auto loan or don't drive!!!

I generally think that if you take out a loan you should adhere to the legally enforceable terms of the contact. So if you agree to pay X dollars back per month then you really should pay X dollars back per month. It irritates me when people borrow money from me and find all sorts of creative reasons why they should not pay it back. I think this is true regardless of financial status. Pay what you owe. A deal is a deal. That said, depending on what the loan or service was, the creditor can encounter difficulty getting repayment. The Federal government and to a lesser extent state governments have fewer problems getting money owed from you as they have the power to just TAKE money from your account, seize your assets, tell your employer or bank to stop giving you money and put you in prison. That will get your attention. Utility providers can shutoff service for non payment. Customers notice that. Loan officers operating outside the law can send unpleasant people to your home or workplace to threaten physical harm if they don't immediately receive payment. Getting your shins cracked with a baseball bat or having your hands broken can provide financial clarity. Some other creditors, say lenders on auto loans, don't have the ability to immediately and seamlessly compel payment. They loaned money on a quickly depreciating asset. Many people don't give car loans priority over housing or food costs. The debtor can easily move his car to another state. To repossess the asset, depending on state law, the creditor usually has to go to court to obtain a judgment before hiring some semi-reputable people to retrieve the vehicle. This could all be messy and costly. In some zip codes if someone hears or sees someone breaking into their car, they will shoot first and ask questions later. So what's a creditor to do?

Well imagine if instead of having to go through the hassle of sending out multiple dunning letters, taking people to court and spending money on repo men, a creditor could ensure that the debtor was interested in, even eager to pay the creditor on time and in full each and every month for the life of the loan? How would someone do that you ask? Well the creditor would just install a handy dandy gadget which prevents the auto from running if the creditor has not been paid.  

The thermometer showed a 103.5-degree fever, and her 10-year-old’s asthma was flaring up. Mary Bolender, who lives in Las Vegas, needed to get her daughter to an emergency room, but her 2005 Chrysler van would not start. The cause was not a mechanical problem — it was her lender. Ms. Bolender was three days behind on her monthly car payment. Her lender, C.A.G. Acceptance of Mesa, Ariz., remotely activated a device in her car’s dashboard that prevented her car from starting. Before she could get back on the road, she had to pay more than $389, money she did not have that morning in March. 

“I felt absolutely helpless,” said Ms. Bolender, a single mother who stopped working to care for her daughter. It was not the only time this happened: Her car was shut down that March, once in April and again in June. This new technology is bringing auto loans — and Wall Street’s version of Big Brother — into the lives of people with credit scores battered by the financial downturn. Auto loans to borrowers considered subprime, those with credit scores at or below 640, have spiked in the last five years. The jump has been driven in large part by the demand among investors for securities backed by the loans, which offer high returns at a time of low interest rates. Roughly 25 percent of all new auto loans made last year were subprime, and the volume of subprime auto loans reached more than $145 billion in the first three months of this year. 

Last year, Nevada’s Legislature heard testimony from T. Candice Smith, 31, who said she thought she was going to die when her car suddenly shut down, sending her careening across a three-lane Las Vegas highway. “It was horrifying,” she recalled.
Ms. Smith said that her lender, C.A.G. Acceptance, had remotely activated her ignition interruption device.
“It’s a safety hazard for the driver and for all others on the road,” said her lawyer, Sophia A. Medina, with the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada.

LINK

This is a good example of how poverty is quite profitable for certain segments of our population. Although these devices are currently only being used on those customers unfortunate enough to be entangled in sketchy subprime loans I would predict it's only a matter of time before usage is expanded to the entire consumer auto loan market. In short you might have a 800 FICO score and be willing to put down 80% of the car's value as a down payment. But a bank might still decide that it can reduce risk by insisting that all of its loans must include shutoff devices. I wouldn't like that. But it's not just enlightened self-interest that would make me oppose these devices. It might be funny from afar if, as described in the article, Joe Sixpack is embarrassed as a deadbeat in front of his lady. It's not so funny when a car shuts off while it's being driven. It's not funny when a car won't start when a police or fire vehicle needs to get in front of it. There's no humor in a a non-working car when someone needs to get to the hospital or there is some other emergency. When I am on the road I try to be as vigilant as possible to protect myself and the lives of others. Part of that protection is a societal interest in ensuring that other drivers are licensed and that their cars work. I don't want to be on the road with other cars that could suddenly shut off. That's an unnecessary risk for us all. The lenders are making unnecessary and dangerous intrusions into our privacy and our safety. I understand their interest in receiving timely payments. But there are other concerns against which those must be balanced. Electronic shutoff devices are a bad idea.

Should electronic shutoff devices be outlawed?

Would you buy a car if your loan included this device as a requirement?

Are these people just examples of poor financial acumen?

Should the Federal government get involved in regulating these devices?

Dean Baquet Replaces Jill Abramson At New York Times

You may have heard that the New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. recently fired Executive Editor Jill Abramson and replaced her with Managing Editor Dean Baquet. Baquet becomes the first Black person to serve as Executive Editor. Abramson's dismissal was met with wails and shrieks from many prominent women in the media who were immediately either convinced or worried that Abramson's termination was based in sexism. I waited to write on this because (1) I wanted to see if any other information about this termination arose (it did), (2) I was very busy at my own job and lacked the time to write and (3) I wasn't convinced that it was something about which I had enough interest to write. But I got a little amused and even annoyed by some of the hysterical hyperventilating happening around this incident. So now that the crisis has hopefully dissipated in my own workplace and my job is safe, I have a little time to share some thoughts about what I now think of as a much hyped non-event.

When your former co-workers give a standing ovation to the person who replaced you it could indicate that you weren't super well liked. I've had both men and women bosses. If you're younger than 60 and have worked any serious amount of time in corporate America you probably have also had bosses of both genders. I wouldn't dare speak for you but I've had women bosses that I admired, respected, and emulated and those that I despised and hated with the white hot intensity of one thousand supernova. And the same is true of male bosses to whom I've reported. Some were decent. Some were middling. Some were superstars. Some were incompetent. Some were downright malevolent and/or bigoted.

In a former workplace I once worked with a black contractor who was a few years older than me. Our company was flexible on start time, especially for direct hires, but expected everyone to put at least 8-9 hrs each day. Most us started between 6 AM and 8 AM. 8:30~9 AM start times were considered late and would cause some raised eyebrows or snide comments. On a good day this fellow would not arrive until 9:30 AM. 10 AM wasn't uncommon. He never stayed late. His tardiness caused problems with management and resentment with peers. One morning he wasn't around when a business group manager needed him for something important. And when he did arrive he ignored her requests. Well that was a mistake. She took a personal interest in documenting his late arrivals and bad mouthing him to her fellow managers and supervisors. Shortly afterwards the man was fired. There is a stereotype of black men being incompetent or tardy. I've dealt with it. But if you really are consistently tardy and get fired you or your friends can't whine about stereotypes. That stuff is on you. Similarly if (and I say if because nobody outside of a few people at the NYT really knows what happened) Abramson really was an abrasive and/or ineffective leader then terminating her was just and fair. If not then I expect a lawsuit will result and we'll be able to read about it in the papers. It's important to remember though that men get fired for among other reasons, being abrasive, including one of Abramson's predecessors at the NYT. Just because someone gets fired for what some people might deem stereotypical reasons, doesn't automatically mean that the firing was unjustified. There actually are a few harsh unpleasant women in this world. According to the NYT, contrary to what some of Abramson's media partisans claimed about her unequal pay, Abramson's compensation was comparable to or exceeded that of her male predecessor.

On Saturday, Mr. Sulzberger said, as he did in an earlier public statement, that Ms. Abramson’s pay package in her last year in the job was 10 percent higher than Mr. Keller’s. “Equal pay for women is an important issue in our country — one that The New York Times often covers,” Mr. Sulzberger wrote. “But it doesn’t help to advance the goal of pay equality to cite the case of a female executive whose compensation was not in fact unequal.”

Until Saturday, Mr. Sulzberger had said only that her removal was due to “an issue with management in the newsroom.” His new statement cited a pattern of behavior that included “arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues.” Mr. Sulzberger said that he had wanted Ms. Abramson to succeed and had discussed these problems with her. But he ultimately concluded that “she had lost the support of her masthead colleagues and could not win it back.” The decision to replace her, he said, was “for reasons having nothing to do with pay or gender.”

LINK
Of course what else will a boss say about someone whom he just fired, right? So I wouldn't necessarily take everything Sulzberger says as gospel. Still it is a reminder that there are usually at least two sides to each story. It's not as cut and dry that male bosses get away with acting unpleasantly and female ones don't. If you are a boss at any level your job includes overseeing and evaluating people's work. You must let them know where they're doing great work, where they could improve and occasionally even unilaterally give them opportunities to succeed elsewhere. But it's also just as important if not more so to get people who want to work for you and with you. Because sometimes if your perceived management style failings are greater than the benefit the company obtains from keeping you on, your actions and attitude could be helping you to dig your own grave, figuratively speaking of course.

I am just dismayed at the rush of judgment by so many people to assume that Abramson's firing was a case of sexism. From what I can tell Abramson tried to dilute Baquet's power and role by bringing in another woman to take away some of his workplace responsibilities. Not working at the NYT I couldn't say if this was justified or not. But I do know, particularly in hyper competitive workplaces, taking work from someone is often seen and meant as a precursor to a less than excellent performance review or worse as cover for pushing them out. There's a HUGE difference between you going to your boss and requesting that s/he hire someone because you're doing the work of five people and your boss deciding on his/her own that the work you're doing isn't quite up to par and you need help. Given that Baquet was a previous finalist for Abramson's job he apparently saw her move as a preemptive strike and responded accordingly. Sulzberger had other issues with Abramson and that was that. Now it's true that Abramson has every right to hire as she sees fit. But let's reverse the genders/management roles. Say Baquet is Executive Editor. If he had tried to hire another Black man to help Abramson do her job the same people complaining about Abramson's firing would be pointing to Baquet's aborted hiring attempt as proof of sexism and the old boy's network. They would be cheering Baquet's firing as a blow against sexism and for transparency.

Heads I win. Tails you lose.

There is racism, sexism and every other ism in the world. That's obvious.
But before we lead a lynch mob on behalf of Abramson, who apparently was not underpaid, let's find out what's going on first. It sounds to me like she made a power play and lost. It happens. It happens to men all the time. Now that more women are in high paid, high stress positions, it will happen to them as well. That's my take anyway, with the evidence I see.

What are your thoughts?
Do you think that abrasive women are still treated differently than abrasive men?
If you work for other people what qualities do you look for in a boss?

Mary Barra Discriminatory Pay Hoax Story

Shortly after Mary Barra became the new GM CEO and the first person with two X chromosomes to hold that title the usual suspects promptly came out of the woodwork to charge GM with the crime of paying Ms. Barra less than her male predecessor and of doing so because she was a woman. This accusation was duly repeated as if it were fact, not just by bloggers but also by reporters for sites supposedly a fair bit more reputable than a run of the mill blog operated by unpaid people in their spare time.
There were numerous blog posts and news stories bemoaning the fact that Barra was making less money than the man she replaced. People's jowls were quivering in outrage that this particular millionaire CEO wasn't going to earn as much money as another millionaire CEO. As Nora Caplan-Bricker wrote in The New Republic  "In the past few days, Mary Barra, the new CEO of General Motors and the first ever female CEO of a major car company, has morphed from a symbol of success to an embodiment of the fact no amount of ambition and labor guarantees a woman equal treatment. It's hard to muster too much sympathy for a woman pulling in $4 million a year. But, in at least a general sense, Barra's problem is every American woman's problem—magnified by a larger sum."  
Strong stuff! From reading this purple prose I honestly expected that Barra would be opening her first leadership meeting by singing this song. I mean she's got it hard! The world is a ghetto! It's another attack in the War on Women! To the barricades comrades!!!!

Well not so fast. As it turns out all of the outraged news stories and blog posts were based on incomplete and thus fundamentally inaccurate information. Actually Ms. Barra stands to earn 60% more in her first year on the job than former CEO Daniel Akerson earned on his final year on the job. That's right, MORE.

Mary T. Barra, chief executive of General Motors, will earn as much as $14.4 million in compensation during her first year on the job, the company said on Monday. The amount of compensation revealed in January — $1.6 million in salary and $2.8 million as part of the company’s short-term incentive plan — will most likely be a small part of Ms. Barra’s earnings, but it was used by media outlets as a baseline comparison to the about $9 million Mr. Akerson earned in compensation last year. 
The total package Ms. Barra stands to receive in her first year as chief executive represents a 60 percent increase over what Mr. Akerson earned in his final year on the job. “As a new C.E.O., Mary’s total compensation is in line with her peer group and properly weighted so that most is at-risk,” G.M.’s chairman, Theodore M. Solso, said in a statement on Monday. “The company’s performance will ultimately determine how much she is paid.”
LINK

So I fully expect that the folks who were hooting and hollering about unfair gender bias against women because they thought that a woman wasn't making as much money as a man certainly now will start flapping their gums about unfair gender bias against men because a woman is making a lot more than a man. I mean we know that gender chauvinism fairness and equality is all such people are concerned about. That's what they constantly tell us and surely they are the best judges of their intentions. I know that the people who jumped the gun and made false claims, incorrect insinuations, and bad assumptions will all ruefully admit they were as wrong as two left shoes and publicly promise to do better next time. I have belief in the goodness of people. Yes I do. And if a sample size of one was enough to indicate unfairness towards women surely the reverse is true about unfairness towards men. Right? Right??? Ha! Or maybe, just maybe, there might have been non gender related reasons for Barra's and Akerson's compensation packages. Hmm. You know, reasons like that federal auto bailout, capped compensation and market share thingy. 

The purely ideological are rarely swayed by evidence and likely won't be in this case either. However this non-story should remind the rest of us living in the reality based community to at least try to take the time to find out what's going on first before we go off the deep end and start making assertions or jumping to conclusions. And the media failed in that job here. It makes you wonder what else they get wrong. After all, as Mark Twain may have said, " A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes".