Free Republic

If there are seven American virtues, I’d guess hard work is either first or second. If I was making the list, it would be first. Early in Going Rogue, Sarah Palin writes of her team winning the state championship in basketball her senior year: " That victory changed my life. More than anything else to that point, it proved what my parents had been trying to instill in me all along: that hard work and passion matter most of all (41)." Isn’t it nice to hear a public figure extol the virtue of hard work for a change? The chattering...

I have learned that when I carry around a clipboard or even a single sheet of paper, people think I am working. If I carry the clipboard tucked under my elbow and a pen in the other, the phenomenon is increased. I'm working hard Today the Senate is in session. The President is coming to visit them. Collectively, they are carrying around a clipboard

Steve Lee, of Denver, Colo., is familiar with the despondency that unemployment brings. Laid off a year ago from a medical-sales position, he admits that depression hit just a few months into his unemployment. "All I could think about was how bad the economy was and how unlikely getting a new job as good as my old one would be," he said. With tips like "start exercising" and "try to stay hopeful," cyber-counsel for the 15 million currently out of work rings hollow at best, leaving those thigh-deep in unemployment wondering where to turn for practical advice. With Thanksgiving just...

NEW YORK – The United States lags far behind other nations in offering paid sick days, paid parental leave and other workplace benefits that proponents consider vital to public health and workers rights, according to research released on Tuesday. The eight-year study found the most economically competitive nations offer forms of paid leave to workers that the United States does not, according to researchers at Harvard University and Canada's McGill University. Of the world's 15 most competitive nations, 14 mandate paid sick leave, 13 guarantee paid maternal leave and 12 provide paid paternal leave by law, they said. Eleven provide...

Performers take part in a show called Kingdom Of The Dwarves at Kunming World Butterflies Garden, Yunnan province, China

France Shows Us Our Future: Longer Work, Shorter Retirement Joe WeisenthalNov. 9, 2009, 6:34 PM It's not all that surprising that France, with its generous labor and pension laws would find itself slamming into a brick wall, as pension systems begin to run dry. FT: Mr Sarkozy favours extending minimum contribution periods for a full pension, rather than raising the standard pension age beyond 60, the official suggested. The contribution period is already set to rise by one year to 41 years by 2012 but should be increased still further. The aim would be to make reform more politically palatable,...

Folks, it's taking alot of gumption for me to write this post. But I'm swallowing my pride to confess that I am distressingly unemployed and wallowing in frustration and anger. Maybe there are others like me in this forum. I'm actually in that "lost" zone between the 10.2% that's claiming unemployment and the estimated 20%+ that has exhausted benefits or just plain given up finding work. Well I HAVEN'T given up. I apply to dozens of jobs per week off of Craigslist, Monster, CareerBuilder and the like, but nothing's landing. I am represented by half a dozen temp agencies, but...

I’m unemployed and since June I have been filing weekly for my benefits. In mid July I began teaching 2 courses at a technical college. My pay was $2000 and the 2 classes which met from 6pm to 10pm and the quarter finished on Sept. 30th. When making my unemployment claim I’m asked on the web form how many days I work each week and I reported 2 even though I’m only teaching 4 hours each day for a total of 8 hours per week (the class meets 2 times each week for 12 weeks for a total of 22...

You don't have to get laid off to feel the pain of this recession. Many workers lucky enough to have survived the ax are still feeling unhappy and unmotivated at work. Raises, bonuses and other incentive programs have been slashed since the downturn began, and employees saddled with additional workloads for less pay are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their current position -- or just plain burnt out.

The four-day week could boost employment, save energy and make us happier. FANCY a three-day weekend - not just once in a while but week in week out? You may think your bosses would never agree to it, but the evidence suggests that employers, employees and the environment all benefit. The four-day week comes in two flavours. One option is to switch from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days, meaning overall hours and salaries stay the same. In August 2008, the state of Utah moved all of its employees, apart from the emergency services, to working 4/10, as it...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24, 2009 – Coalition and Iraqi forces have sacrificed greatly to build security and develop a democratic process in Iraq, and after nearly seven years, the hard work is paying off, a senior commander in southeastern Baghdad told American Forces Press Service. An Iraqi army officer speaks with U.S. Army Lt. Col. Michael Shinners, left, and U.S. Army Capt. Dallas Cheatham, right, about the history of the Taq-i-kisra Arch and the area that surrounds it, Aug. 5, 2009. Shinners is the deputy commander for the 82nd Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team. Cheatham is commander of the brigade’s...

Renovation work is underway at the main synagogue in central Beirut, after approval from the Lebanese government, planning authorities and even Hezbollah. The work, which is being funded by private donors and a Lebanese construction firm, began two weeks ago, according to various media reports. Built in the 1920s, the synagogue is located in the neighborhood of Wadi Abu Jamil, close to Lebanese parliament and other government buildings in downtown Beirut.

COB SPEICHER — The area around the Askari "Golden" Mosque of Samarra once thrived as an open-air market serving thousands of visitors every year. Iraqi and U.S. forces are working to guarantee security, and that means more than safety. It also means rebuilding the economy. Joined by Samarra Mayor Mahmood Khalaf Ahmed, U.S. Soldiers with the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion and the 25th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, distributed $2.5 million in small-business grants to more than 900 local store owners Aug. 3 - 5. Following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in February 2006, business plummeted. Some...

We need people like you—lots of people like you—to go out in communities around the country this summer and help make change happen. And you can earn money doing it. Earn $4,000-$6,000 this summer. **I found these in every state but with different titles on craigslist)***

People who have been out of work for months are lining up for jobs at places they once considered unthinkable: slaughterhouses, sewage plants, prisons. "I have to just shut my mouth because I can't do anything about it," said Nichole McRoberts of Sedalia, Mo., who pictured more for herself at age 30 than working in a poultry plant, cutting diseased or damaged flesh off chicken carcasses. Recessions and tight job marketsalways force some people to take less-desirable or lower-paying work than they are used to. But this recession has been the most punishing job destroyer in at least 60 years,...

Poll: Do you give 100% effort in everything you do? A Daily Poll

I just got laid off and I'm thinking about working for free. I've been working for 27 years and I've been fortunate that this is the first time this has happened to me. I have a family with 3 kids and I won't be able to work for free for very long (for a couple weeks perhaps) but I thought that I might look for work outside my usual 10 hour day in a cubicle tap-tap-tapping on a computer for the tech industry. I got paid well but to tell the truth I'm tired of the hectic pace and Asperger...

ALBANY - The numbers released from the state's Labor Department Wednesday indicate that the economic crisis is still not over. The Georgia Department of Labor reported the state's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate to be at 10.1 percent for June - the highest jobless rate Georgia has ever recorded. "We are in tough times," said state Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. "We are in the midst of the most severe economic downturn since World War II. Georgians are finding it difficult to get back in the work force." Data was also released Wednesday regarding jobs in the state's metropolitan areas from the...

d out which companies in your area are endangering workers' health or involved in cases of violations of workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act. The database contains information on more than 60,000 companies nationwide. More on Job Tracker sources and data. Enter your ZIP code, state or company name below, or search by specific industry to see the detailed information.

HCL Technologies is one of India's most powerful and respected tech firms. The company scored a massive $170M USD outsourcing contract from Microsoft last year. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer lavished them with praise, stating, "That extra mile walk by the team (at HCL) has increased our mutual trust and has taken our relationship to newer heights. " Now HCL's CEO Vineet Nayar has gone on record with some controversial remarks about the quality of American technology college graduates. Tired of hearing stereotypes about Indian tech grads, Mr. Nayar, speaking before an audience of business partners in New York City, blasted...

OPPORTUNITY IN RECESSION (June 17, 2009) By Andrei Nana* Generally, we complain about the recession because it affects our lives negatively. It starts with finances and having less money to live on. This impacts everybody’s life without regard to the issue of net worth. Usually, the second impact might be seen in self esteem, followed by a negative impact on relationships, and so on. Very soon we find ourselves in the position of being bankrupt, as well as depressed. We all agree that during “hard times,” people and companies make money. Some countries prosper during wars, and some investors make...

President Barack Obama says he's a night owl. Obama tells C-SPAN in an interview airing Saturday that after he's had dinner with his family and tucked his daughters into bed, he typically stays up until midnight going through a big stack of material he's taken into the White House residence. He says he sometimes pushes the big stack aside to do some writing and focus on some of the issues "that are coming down the pike" — rather than immediate issues.

CURRENT ISSUEARCHIVESUBSCRIBER SERVICES ABOUT BROWSE BY: TOPIC | AUTHOR Shop Class as Soulcraft  Matthew B. Crawford This essay has been expanded into a book, to be released by Penguin on May 28, 2009. Anyone in the market for a good used machine tool should talk to Noel Dempsey, a dealer in Richmond, Virginia. Noel’s bustling warehouse is full of metal lathes, milling machines, and table saws, and it turns out that most of it is from schools. EBay is awash in such equipment, also from schools. It appears shop class is becoming a thing of the past, as educators...

Enlarge ImageNano vibrator. A tiny device called a zipper cavity can convert laser light into mechanical energy. Credit: Matt Eichenfield and Jasper Chan, Nature Researchers have built a nanoscale device that vibrates when struck by incoming laser light. The contraption, which is sensitive to the energy of a single photon, could speed the development of new optical communications systems. It could also help scientists probe some of the fundamental properties of matter with greater precision. Light beams might not seem capable of performing mechanical work (photons, the carriers of light waves, have no mass), but at the atomic level...

As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices--if they must--so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them "the good times," as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story...

Scientists discover we are genetically hard-wired to work in 8-hour intervals. Think about it, workaholics.

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, April 8, 2009 – More than 5,000 residents of Afghanistan’s Panjshir province gathered March 30 to celebrate the groundbreaking for a road some say will make the area the best in the country for travel. Air Force Lt. Col. Mark E. Stratton, Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team commander, speaks to a crowd of more than 5,000 people who attended the groundbreaking ceremony in the Safied Shahir village of Panjshir’s Khenj district for a road to Badakshan province, March 30, 2009. U.S. Army photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The $28 million project, funded by the provincial...

Check here every day for new additions http://geo.craigslist.org/ http://www.monster.com/ http://www.indeed.com/ http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ http://www.careerbuilder.com/ http://www.dice.com/ http://www.jobbankusa.com/ http://www.vault.com/ http://www.job.com/

Employment The Lord has commanded us to work and to provide for the needs of ourselves and our families (see Genesis 3:17-19, 1 Timothy 5:8; D&C 42:42; 56:17). Suitable employment also gives us opportunities to improve our talents and develop the divine attributes within us. Find Jobs and Other Opportunities Find job leads, employers, education programs, business development programs, financial aid for education, and community support resources. Tips to Get You Hired! Discover how to network, make power and “Me in 30 Second” statements. Find out about the Career Workshop and all the other services that Employment Resource Services has...

(IsraelNN.com) Kadima leader Tzipi Livni said over the weekend that men work inefficiently to tally up extra hours at work. "Women don't work inefficiently and tally up extra hours, while men are inefficient, they have time, and a lot of extra hours. They make more money, and I fought to change that,” she said in a speech at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo. The attack on men's work habits was an attempt by Livni to explain the wage gap between the average salaries of men and women in public service, which studies have shown is largely caused by a...

Everyone always thinks they have it worse than the next guy. Your boss is always the nastiest; your co-workers are the most annoying; and there's no way anyone has a more awful cube mate. Until now. The sad truth is that there's nothing like learning about other people's troubles to make you feel better about your own. Just when you thought you had it bad, someone else comes along to make your problems seem irrelevant. The terrible employees from CareerBuilder.com's second annual list of "Worst Employees of the Year" are no exception. Last year's employees stole, cheated, scammed, assaulted, lied,...

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq, Jan. 15, 2009 – Soldiers are expected to adapt to any environment, and a Mississippi National Guard soldier here is living up to that expectation as she works outside her normal specialty. Army Spc. Susan Fautner is one of many soldiers who have adapted to a job and life outside of their experience. She joined the Guard in April 2004 as a supply specialist. “Her ability to multitask, add humor and dependability has relieved me of a lot of extra duty hours,” Army Staff Sgt. Rico McNair, supply sergeant for 890th Engineer Battalion Forward Support Company,...

No, it wasn't your imagination. Pants were in short supply along four lines of the New York City subway system on Saturday. The No Pants! Subway Ride, organized by Improv Everywhere each January, is a chance for New Yorkers to ride the rails unencumbered by the burden of jeans, slacks or trousers. http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/weird/Undeground-Pants-Down.html

The House has passed legislation to assure that employers live up to their four-decade-old legal promise to provide equal pay for equal work. Democrats led lawmakers in approving a bill making clear that women who are victims of gender-based discrimination can sue for compensatory and punitive damage. The chamber was also voting on a bill in response to a Supreme Court decision that workers must file a discrimination claim within 180 days of a pay violation. Supporters of changing the law said many workers don't find out about wage disparities for years. The two bills, coming in the first week...

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees.

Millions of workers are facing a potentially crippling overtime ban after Euro MPs voted to scrap Britain's cherished opt-out from the 48-hour working week. On the day UK unemployment neared two million, 13 of 19 Labour MEPs defied Gordon Brown and backed the move to end our special deal. The vote horrified ministers and business leaders, who say scrapping the right to earn extra cash would deal a devastating blow to families hit by the growing economic downturn. It would also restrict firms desperate to beat the recession by putting in extra time to complete orders, they warned. But unions...

We are all guided by three principles of survival: love, opportunity, and fear. The numbers seem startling: 58,000 new unemployment claims last week and 533,000 jobs lost last month.  We are standing in the midst of a 6.7% unemployment rate.  And, of course, millions of workers related to the auto industry face layoffs.  The result of this turbulence in the job market has lead to the distribution of billions of dollars in unemployment insurance, causing the call for additional government funding at both the state and federal levels.         But I get confused by another set of numbers: Careerbuilder offers over...

It was once a bustling centre for the textile industry with thousands hard at work in the cotton mills. But now Falinge in Rochdale has been branded the sick-note capital of Britain with almost half the population apparently too ill to work. An astonishing 42.9 per cent of all working-age adults living in the council ward are claiming incapacity benefits. The Office of National Statistics revealed that 490 of the 1,141 people of working age in the area rely on the handout. The figures are a major blow to the Government which claims new measures are helping those on incapacity...

(IsraelNN.com) A Fatah terrorist in Gaza was killed during terrorist training in 2005, and more than three years later the cellphone video recording documenting the event is circulating in terrorist websites. The Blue Eye website, which brings this information, calls the video "very rare." It shows Fatah terrorist Khalid Hamid of Khan Younis trying to fire an RPG at a vehicle marked with an Israeli flag. The rocket goes off prematurely and the other terrorists on the scene begin shouting 'Allahu Akbar' and crying after realizing Hamid is hurt. Hamid is evacuated by fellow terrorists, who place him inside a...

"With grim economic news coming from many directions, it's easy to get discouraged about our ability to repair the damage of years of failed economic policies. And yet, there are pragmatic solutions to our biggest challenges, including ways to restore health care and retirement security, to create family-supporting jobs, and to reestablish a leadership role in the global economy. Collaborating with some of the nation's top progressive thinkers, EPI researchers have been exploring and refining solutions for the better part of two years. Now, just in time for national debates on economic direction, EPI has compiled the best of these...

President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday lauded President Bush for convening a meeting of the world’s largest economies to address the global financial crisis but also urged more action at home. The Illinois senator, in a radio address that for the first time was also videotaped and posted online, said a “coordinated global response” is needed to address the crisis. In addition to world leaders discussing the issue this weekend, Obama argued that Congress must do more to help struggling Americans. “Millions of our fellow citizens lie awake each night wondering how they’re going to pay their bills, stay in their...

President Evo Morales has announced he is suspending "indefinitely" the operations of the US Drug Enforcement Administration in Bolivia.Mr Morales accused the agency of having encouraged anti-government protests in the country in September. He did not say whether its staff would be asked to leave the country, as coca- growers have been pressing him to do. Bolivia's first indigenous president once served as the leader of the country's union of coca-growers.

Employees who take long spells of sick leave more than once in three years are at a higher risk of death than their colleagues who take no such absence, particularly if their absence is due to circulatory or psychiatric problems or for surgery, concludes a study on bmj.com today. Previous research shows that medically certified sickness absences may well capture the full range of illnesses employees experience and that they could be a good global measure of health differentials between employees. It has been suggested that the specific reasons for absence such as psychiatric problems or heart disease may improve...

I was talking politics with an attorney recently who, pondering the possible outcomes of the Obama-McCain election, sighed “I can’t wait ’til this is over.” “Are you kidding?” I replied. “I haven’t had this much fun doing talk radio since Bill met Monica under a White House desk!” “Yeah, well, your job is different,” he answered. And he’s right. Partisan politics is a talk show host’s bread and butter. But for my attorney friend, workplace debates about the presidential race had become so common - and so heated - that a recent conference meeting he attended began with a warning...

Political debates have a way of raising blood pressures and decibels among co-workers as much as candidates. Whether you're a rabid Republican, a diehard Democrat or an intense independent, you can't help but overhear or take part in political banter that inevitably surfaces around watercoolers, cubicles and in the lunchroom. Conversations seem especially lively this year, given the historic proportions of this election. That's OK say some, just as long as conversations don't turn into heated debates that disrupt productivity or create a tense work environment. A 2008 survey by the American Management Association shows that 40 percent of business...

Bosses in general can be a pain in the ... well, you know, but a new study finds that your boss' gender can affect just how much pain he or she seems to inflict. Researchers at the University of Toronto used data from a 2005 national telephone survey of working adults in the United States and compared the stress levels and physical health problems of men and women working in one of three situations: for a lone male supervisor, a lone female supervisor, or for both a male and female supervisor. The study found that: * Women who had only...

President Nicolas Sarkozy's key electoral promise to allow the French to "work more to earn more" has hit a major snag: most have no desire to put in extra hours to raise their wages, a poll has found. With the economy floundering and the French consistently complaining that falling purchasing power is their main worry, only a quarter are prepared to work more to raise their standard of living. Almost six out of ten have no desire to increase their working hours, according to a poll in Le Parisien newspaper. Some 13 per cent would like to work less, even...

Americans are changing the game plan for retirement, with millions laboring right past the traditional retirement age and working into their late 60s and beyond. For 64-year-old John Lee, "retirement" bears a strong resemblance to his full-time working career; full of 40- and 50-hour weeks as an IT technical support specialist. He's not strapped but likes the extra cash and the feeling of being needed. But for Melissa Fodor, a retired travel agent who works part-time as a caregiver for the elderly, the extra work "keeps my head above water" and there's no end in sight to that financial need...