Free Republic

Federal workplace safety authorities have fined a central Pennsylvania confectionary factory more than $14,500 following an accident last year in which two workers fell into a vat of chocolate.

The city of Chicago, Illinois, in partnership with big business, is launching an effort to score jobs for foreign H-1B visa workers who have been laid off from their tech jobs in recent weeks. The city’s World Business Chicago group, which is a public-private firm, has joined P33, the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, the Corporate Coalition of Chicago, and others to fill jobs at companies like Caterpillar, Illinois Tech, John Deere, Ulta Beauty, and Walgreens with foreign H-1B visa workers who have recently been laid off.

Mayor Eric Adams strode into Cipriani Wall Street, packed with the city’s civic and business elite, to tout a highly ambitious, thinly sketched plan to reinvigorate the city’s commercial districts. “We’re going to show the country why we are New York, and this new New York conversation is going to show how together we get all cylinders operating on the same engine to regain our economy, regain our city, and we leave no one behind,” he said. That plan would include more bus lanes, electric-vehicle charging stations, and converting official buildings to residential use. In recent weeks, he announced an...

Sen. Angus King (I-ME) says Congress ought to pass a legislative package that expands legal immigration levels to fill unfilled United States jobs with foreign workers rather than pulling jobless Americans off the labor market sidelines. In an interview with CBS News, King said such a package should include border-related reforms, an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, and an expansion of the nation’s legal immigration levels. which already bring more than a million green card holders to the U.S. annually in addition to more than a million foreign visa workers to take American jobs.

The billionaire co-founder of Home Depot is slamming what he says is a poor work ethic among laborers today, claiming that “nobody gives a damn” about job performance in the present-day economy. “'Nobody works. Nobody gives a damn,” Bernie Marcus told the Financial Times in an interview this week. In a jeremiad against what he claimed were insufficiently motivated workers, Marcus mimicked them: "Just give it to me. Send me money. I don’t want to work - I’m too lazy, I’m too fat, I’m too stupid." The business tycoon claimed to the Times that his highly successful hardware chain would...

Two former Twitter employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, accusing it of gender discrimination. The lawsuit - filed in San Francisco Federal Court - alleges that Musk's new policies had a "disproportionate impact" on women. According to data analyzed in the lawsuit, Twitter laid off 57% of the its female employees and only 47% of its male employees. Within that, 63% of women in engineering roles were laid off compared to only 48% of men in similar roles, according to the lawsuit's data analysis. This is one among several lawsuits former employees have filed against Twitter since...

The Labor Department’s November jobs report on Friday certainly didn’t make the Federal Reserve’s anti-inflation task any easier. Strong job and wage growth suggests demand for workers still exceeds the supply, and inflation is still too high. Employers added 263,000 jobs last month though gains were revised down by 23,000 during the previous two. Private payrolls increased by 221,000 with hiring broad-based, including in leisure and hospitality (88,000), healthcare (45,000), construction (20,000), media and tech (19,000), manufacturing (14,000) and real estate (13,000). There’s no sign of a recession in this jobs data. Retail lost 30,000 jobs, probably owing to spending...

Amid pressure on Congress to pass a bill that would avert a rail shutdown, ​​Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Tuesday that he won’t back any deal that lacks support from rail workers. “Just because Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution does not mean we should. It is wrong for the Biden Administration, which has failed to fight for workers, to ask Congress to impose a deal the workers themselves have rejected. I will not vote for any deal that does not have the support of the rail workers,” Rubio said in a statement.

Chuck Schumer has apparently had an epiphany — without serfs, there can be no lord.Yesterday, the re-elected Senate leader addressed a crowd of reporters, and recognized a serious issue plaguing America, “Now more than ever, we’re short of workers.”But don’t fret, the fearless leader has a solution: fill the void with foreign-born invaders, and grant them citizenship.Citing the shortage, Schumer announced his party’s reinvigorated support for amnesty and citizenship for the illegal populations currently within our (fluid) borders — amnesty because these aliens are criminals for already having already violated America’s laws, and citizenship so they can officially become tax...

At a time when/if the economy was functioning as most economic pundits have previously proclaimed, Amazon and other retail giants would normally be beefing up workers in anticipation of the holiday shopping season. However, with the midterm election in the rearview mirror, exactly the opposite is happening. {Backstory on prior employment announcements}According to multiple media reports, Amazon is expected to announce layoffs for approximately 10,000 U.S. workers this week. Yet another indication the economic pretending is coming to an end right after the midterm election is concluded.(CNBC) – Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in corporate and...

When millions of office employees started working from home in 2020, the plan for most was eventually to return to work, not stay remote forever. But two and a half years later, many workers really don’t want to go back to the office, and companies are struggling to figure out how to convince them to return, offering enticements like free food, prizes, and even alcoholic beverages to draw workers back. Some companies are getting more creative than that, as this person who wrote to me recounts: "I have seen a lot of lures, and none of them are working. Free...

Officials say a Pinellas County deputy was killed overnight in a hit-and-run crash at a construction site on Interstate 275 near Roosevelt Boulevard. The Pinellas County Sheriff's Office has announced the suspect in the hit-and-run death of a deputy was taken into custody after an eight-hour search in the Ulmerton Road and I-275 area. According to Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, Deputy Michael Hartwick, 51, was killed when he was struck by a front-end loader being driven by a construction worker just after 10:30 p.m. Thursday night. The suspect was initially believed to be Victor Vasquez-Real by deputies. The individual allegedly...

There are far too few workers in the U.S. to meet rising demand, a problem exacerbated by an aging population, low birthrates, and stifled immigration. It could become one of the biggest economic challenges of the next several decades.

During portions of interviews with Fox News Digital released on Saturday, manufacturing workers in Pennsylvania sounded off on President Joe Biden’s student loan debt cancellation program. Jim Davis said, “It’s not going to affect the people that are here, the people that are actually out doing all the work. So, yeah, he’s going to help the people in the bigger cities because that’s what he wants. But as far as me, it’s not going to help me.”

California lawmakers on Monday approved a nation-leading measure that would give more than a half-million fast food workers more power and protections, over the objections of restaurant owners who warn it would drive up consumers’ costs. The bill will create a new 10-member Fast Food Council with equal numbers of workers’ delegates and employers’ representatives, along with two state officials, empowered to set minimum standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California. A late amendment would cap any minimum wage increase for fast food workers at chains with more than 100 restaurants at $22 an hour next year, compared...

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — More than 300 employees from five state agencies have resigned since Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Virginia’s new telework policy in early May, according to records obtained by 8News. This includes 183 Virginia Department of Transportation employees, 28 of whom cited “telework options” as the reason for leaving. Two VDOT workers who listed telework as the reason did move to another state agency, records obtained by 8News after filing a Freedom of Information Act request show.On May 5, Youngkin ordered all state workers to begin working in-person full-time by July 5, a change the governor said would...

The Austin City Council voted to approve a resolution that would direct the city manager to adopt a minimum wage of $22 per hour for city employees. During the meeting on June 16, several city workers testified and said that a higher wage is necessary because of inflation, according to FOX 7 Austin. The resolution asks the city manager to develop a plan and timeline to increase the minimum wage to $22 per hour for city workers, which is increased from the current $15 per hour.

Employees at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland voted Saturday to join a union, a significant achievement for organized labor that could encourage employees at other Apple stores to unionize. The Towson store is the first unionized Apple store in the U.S. The vote is a defeat for Apple, which has opposed unionization efforts, and could energize workers at the company’s other retail locations to move forward with organizing.

Billionaire real estate tycoon Stephen Ross suggested Friday that a looming US economic recession could put an end to the work-from-home craze that swept the country during the pandemic. Ross, whose firm Related Cos. owns office space in New York and across the US, suggested the possibility of layoffs could lead employees to drop their resistance.

President Joe Biden is subsidizing businesses with 35,000 more foreign H-2B visa workers to hire for non-agricultural jobs in the United States, even as nearly 12 million Americans remain jobless. On Monday, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that the administration would begin allowing businesses to hire up to 35,000 additional foreign H-2B visa workers for nonagricultural jobs in construction, hospitality, and landscaping.