Free Republic

To their credit, some members of Congress (amazingly including some Democrats) have not lost sight of earlier reports indicating that more than 85,000 children seem to have gone missing after crossing the border into the United States illegally. Some of them may (hopefully) have wound up safely with family members around the country while others were tragically fed into a sex trafficking pipeline. But another large number of them have turned up working, sometimes in forced labor situations. This led to the questioning of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra yesterday over how his Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)...

The explosion of remote work in recent years may come with a physical toll. Three years after the arrival of COVID-19 triggered a mass exodus from offices, about 22 million Americans were still working fully remotely as of March 2023, according to Pew Research Center data. The shift to remote work has been life-changing for many working adults, like those who have disabilities or are caregivers to family members, and surveys show Americans as a whole love working from home.

President Joe Biden’s deputies quietly announced a work permit giveaway on Wednesday that would allow hundreds of thousands of white-collar temporary workers from India to permanently compete against American graduates for jobs and careers. The giveaway for many Indian H-1B, L-1, and O-1 temporary workers was announced on the same day that House GOP members issued a report that completely ignored migration’s vast damage to Americans’ wages and salaries. The GOP report is intended to help build public support for the impeachment of Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas. But the GOP report, titled, “Causes, Costs, and Consequences: Why Secretary...

When Sam Dogen retired at age 34 with a net worth of $3million he vowed never to return to his grueling job in investment banking. As a pioneer of the FIRE - financial independence, retire early - movement, he had meticulously planned for 13 years to ensure he had a passive income of $80,000 a year in retirement. But a decade later, Dogen, now 45, is being forced to join the ranks of the unretired. Amid soaring inflation and rising costs, he needs to go back to work to be able to afford his kids' college tuition, which he has...

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Sound On,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey said that it is crucial that veterans and homeless people were spared the “onerous work requirements” for SNAP benefits in the debt limit and that it appears as though access to food stamps will increase on the whole, but estimates at this point are “very, both preliminary and subject to variance.” Boushey said, [relevant remarks begin around 4:30] “Listen, the important thing here is that the president focused on maintaining his priorities. And certainly, making sure that veterans have access, that homeless folks have...

I used the link above but I mostly want to see if others are slow at work. We sell processing equipment to the food, pharma and plastic industries. We're dead---slower than 2016 and it's getting worse. Our shop is going to 4 day work weeks with no overtime allowed and most likely we will have layoffs in the office. I have been here for 35 years and have never seen it this slow. Heck, this company started during the great depression---if this keeps up it will be closed in a matter of 6 months. Our competitors and customers are saying...

In an interview with the Daily Mail, billionaire supermarket CEO John Catsimatidis expressed concern that Gen Z’s commitment to social media platforms like TikTok is hampering their career growth, echoing a sentiment shared by several other business magnates. In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, billionaire John Catsimatidis expressed concern that Gen Z’s reliance on social media sites like TikTok is impeding their professional development, echoing a sentiment expressed by a number of other business titans.

For the last couple of years I have been looking at relocating out of North Kalifornia (aka Washington State), the political climate and values I hold dear are no longer recognized or respected. I cannot hold onto the hope that the Idaho boarder shifts my way. Texas was my first choice, then I remembered how many poisonous crawlers live there, and honestly I need my mountains, evergreen trees and snow. Alaska really is the state for me. It will pain me to leave my mountain (Mt. St Helens). For years I have felt a calling to Alaska, not just because...

VIDEOIf you want to see an example of the large societal change that has occurred in the USA over the past 60 years, compare the attitudes of Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa with today's barista having a meltdown over work.

A video of a 13-year-old working at Chick-fil-A went viral recently after an advocacy group called More Perfect Union uploaded it to Twitter and then pointed the finger at the "National Restaurant Association—a lobby group funded by big food corporations," calling it "a key driver behind new bills letting kids work dangerous jobs." Sure, taking drive-thru orders and slinging waffle fries at a Chick-fil-A your dad owns sounds like the definition of danger. Exactly like working in a coal mine. Over the past year, to help deal with labor shortages, several states have pushed for legislative changes that would let...

It is natural to desire respect. We are social animals; everybody wants to be important. We don’t want to feel like we’re being pushed to the outside of the herd or that the pack doesn’t need us. For healthy people in most circumstances this desire is useful in that it pushes them to become an essential part of the lives of family, friends, neighbors, customers, employers, and coworkers; helping and then becoming needed and appreciated. That is all well and good. It’s as healthy as the desire for food and shelter. But all desires can turn to vice if they...

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will be permitted to work from home next week upon being discharged from an inpatient physical therapy facility Saturday after suffering a concussion and rib fracture on March 8. “I want to sincerely thank everyone for all the kind wishes. I’m happy to say I finished inpatient physical therapy earlier today and I’m glad to be home,” McConnell issued a statement Saturday afternoon.

In the aftermath of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th biggest bank in the country, many are left wondering what went wrong. Both current and former employees have stated that the bank’s support of remote work is a contributing factor. Axios reports that current and former employees of Silicon Valley bank have mentioned the bank’s support of remote work as a contributing factor to its recent collapse. SVB stood out in the banking sector for its commitment to remote work. “If our time working remotely has taught us anything, it’s that we can trust our employees to...

South Korea’s government has been forced to rethink a planned rise in working hours after a backlash from younger people who said the move would destroy their work-life balance and put their health at risk. The government had intended to raise the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours after business groups complained.But protests from the country’s millennials and generation z prompted the president, Yoon Suk-yeol, to order government agencies to reconsider the measure. The plan has also been criticised as out of step with other major economies, including Britain, where dozens of companies last year trialled a four-day week...

"Sultans Of Swing" by Dire Straits is almost the perfect song. NOTES FROM THE SUPERMARKET Buying produce at the supermarket can be a dicey thing. You never really know how fresh it really it or where it has been. I like to buy blackberries to swirl in my yogurt, blueberries too. In both cases, the package tells you to rinse the berries before eating. But does rinsing really clean them? How do you know all the germ came off by rinsing? The fruit looks no different than before you rinsed, except wetter. Maybe all the water really did was splatter...

The four-day workweek bill is back, but will it garner enough support from lawmakers this time around? Democratic Congressman Mark Takano of California has reintroduced the 32-Hour Workweek Act. The legislation aims to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and reduce the standard workweek from five days to four days, with no change to employee pay. Rep. Takano says it's a necessary culture shift that would give American workers more time for family, leisure and education. "Workers across the nation are collectively reimagining their relationship to labor — and our laws need to follow suit,” Takano said. “We have...

Remote work may boost marriage rates and encourage women who are already parents to have more children, a new paper found. Economist Adam Ozimek and demographer Lyman Stone, analyzing the survey data of 3,000 American women between the ages of 18-44 from the Demographic Intelligence Family Survey, hypothesize that “remote work during COVID made a positive contribution to the U.S. and potentially other developed countries’ fertility rates.” The findings come after the U.S. reported the lowest fertility rate on record in 2020.

Women were notably victimized by lockdowns, masking, and vaccine mandates. The lockdowns yanked many working women with children out of the workforce, closed child care and schooling, and forced them back into the home. Millions were hit by this fate, and many are still not back at work. Labor force participation by working-age women is back where it was decades ago. That is to say, many women who lost paid work have not gone back to work. I’ve yet to see any major feminist influencer comment on this disaster much less speak frankly about what has happened, namely the reversal...

A growing number of office landlords are defaulting on loan payments as the rise of remote work causes more corporate tenants to rethink long-term leases... The delinquency rate on office loans increased by a quarter percentage point to 1.83% last month .. While the number is still relatively low, the increase was the sharpest of its kind since December 2021. ... The shift away from traditional offices has impacted major firms. Brookfield Asset Management recently disclosed a default on more than $70 million in debt on two office towers in Los Angeles. In Manhattan, real estate firm RXR is reportedly...

The pandemic may be winding down, but the work-from-home revolution marches on. Nearly 30 percent of all work happened at home in January, six times the rate in 2019, according to WFH Research, a data-collection project. In Washington and other large urban centers, the share of remote work is closer to half. In the nation’s biggest cities, entire office buildings sit empty. The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American workplace. The share of all work performed at home rose from 4.7 percent in January 2019 to 61 percent in May 2020. Some economists consider the remote-work boom the greatest change to...