May 1 (Reuters) - Uber drivers in New York state have formed an association to strengthen their hand in dealing with the ride-sharing service, labor leaders said on Sunday, days after the company agreed to a $100 million settlement with drivers in two other states.
More than 1,000 Uber drivers signed membership cards with the association, known as the Amalgamated Local of Livery Employees in Solidarity, or Alles, the association said in a statement.
The recent settlement with Uber Drivers in California and Massachusetts over expense claims also allowed them to form associations that can bring grievances to the attention of management. The step follows a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board that blocked the formation of a traditional union for Uber drivers.
Alles said it would work to protect members against car companies, insurance firms and others, while urging New York City and state to tighten regulations on Uber and its ride-sharing competitors.
"Since Uber management controls the fares charged for the service, drivers want and need security and protection," the association said in a statement. "Uber financiers are forcing drivers to work long hours without any benefits or labor law protections."
Drivers are struggling to make car payments, maintain their vehicles and still have enough money left over to support their families, said Kevin Lynch, co-chair of the association. "It shows that people are really hurting," he said.
A representative of Uber Technologies Inc, based in San Francisco, was not immediately available for comment.
Uber, along with Lyft and other competitors, enable passengers to ask for rides with a smartphone app that sends the request to drivers who use their own cars. Many of the drivers are part-timers.
The business model has come under sharp criticism from established taxi companies and many cities and states because the drivers are unlicensed and the fares are untaxed.
A class-action suit by Uber drivers in California and Massachusetts claimed Uber drivers were employees and thus entitled to reimbursement of expenses. The company insists drivers are independent contractors.
The April 21 settlement, which still must be approved by a San Francisco federal judge, provides for a $100 million payout to drivers in those two states on the basis of how many miles each has driven for Uber.
As a part of the settlement, the company can still treat drivers as contractors, but it agreed to allow them to form drivers' associations.
The case against Uber had been closely watched in Silicon Valley, as other companies in the on-demand tech economy share Uber's reliance on independent contractors. The class action had been scheduled for a trial in San Francisco federal court in June.
Nothing in the settlement prevents a court, or U.S. labor authorities, from deeming Uber drivers employees, an attorney for the drivers said in a statement. (Editing by Frank McGurty and Andrew Hay)
The store that sells every home good under the sun now also sells solar panels.
The company announced on Monday that it will sell and install solar panels in the United Kingdom.
Three stores, in Glasgow, Birmingham and Lakeside, will act as a U.K. pilot for the company’s new “solar shops,” where the panels will be sold. Customers across the pond can also order and get a cost estimate of the panels online, and Ikea hopes to have solar shops in all of its U.K. stores by the end of the summer.
The announcement coincided with research conducted by Ikea that found that 33 percent of U.K. homeowners would like to invest in home solar panels as a way to help cut their electricity bills. According to the release, the same study says that customers could save up to 50 percent on their electricity bills with the solar panels.
ASSOCIATED PRESSIkea uses solar power in its stores. In this photo, Joseph Roth checks the installation of South Florida’s largest solar panel array atop the future IKEA store in Miami.
The Guardian reports that Ikea U.K. has made the move to sell the panels even after solar installations experienced a recent decline due to the government cutting subsidies to householders installing rooftop solar panels by a whopping 65 percent. That cut was made just days after the U.K. agreed to help the nation quickly shift to a low-carbon energy future at the climate change conference in Paris in late 2015.
This is Ikea U.K.’s second attempt at selling solar panels. The company had a two-year agreement with the Chinese company, Hanergy, but their partnership ended last year. Ikea UK is now working with the London-based company, SolarCentury, which will provide more efficient panels with a better aesthetic.
“At Ikea we believe that renewable energy is undoubtedly the power of the future,” Joanna Yarrow, head of sustainability at Ikea UK and Ireland said in the announcement. “We’re already using solar power across our operations, and it’s exciting to be able to help households tap into this wonderful source of clean energy.”
Saudi Arabia announced the seemingly impossible. The world’s largest oil producer and owner of an oil company reportedly worth more than $2 trillion, is going to kick its fossil fuel habit, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said yesterday.
"We have developed a case of oil addiction in Saudi Arabia," he told al-Arabiya television news channel, after officially unveiling a plan whose key parts had already been carefully released.
Forty percent of the kingdom’s GDP and a whopping 90 percent of the government’s revenue comes from oil.
But that is coming to an end, Prince Mohammed said.
“By 2020, if oil stops we can survive,” he said. “We need it, we need it, but I think in 2020 we can live without oil."
It sounds impossible because it is. There is no way the Saudi economy can be reformed to be able to live without oil in just four years. With oil prices at historic lows and looking like they will stay there for a long time, they may wish they could live without oil in a few years.
But the only way to achieve Prince Mohammed’s admirable and ambitious goal is to do bit of entry-level balance sheet gymnastics.
In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.
The Gulf kingdom owns all of Aramco oil company. It intends to sell shares of the company to outside investors and list it on the Saudi stock exchange. But the government plans to sell only 5 percent of Aramco to outside investors and retain ownership of 95 percent of the company. It will transfer that huge stake into a sovereign wealth fund, where it will be classified as an investment.
And that’s it, though there there is more to it in the long term. But the only way to meet Prince Mohammed’s 2020 timeline is to use some very basic category shifts. As the prince said, once Aramco is a public company and the Saudi’s shares are in a sovereign wealth fund, “technically, on paper, your income will be provided by investment. The remaining issue is how you diversify your investments.”
“There is less to this than meets the eye,” Jason Tuvey, Middle East economist at Capital Economics wrote in a note to clients. “It reflects a shift of balance sheets rather than any new assets and doesn’t in itself reduce the government’s dependence on oil revenues. In short, we don’t buy into Mohammed bin Salman’s assertion that Saudi Arabia will no longer by dependent on oil by 2020.”
Longer-term, the Saudi’s will keep selling Aramco shares and invest in other companies, slowly but steadily turning their kingdom from a family-owned oil company into a family-owned investment firm that owns an oil company. But that has to be a very deliberate and incremental process.
You just can’t sell trillions of dollars in a single company’s shares at once, and you can’t reform an oil-addicted economy by just moving around stock certificates.
Etsy has already offered flasks emblazoned with solar panels and canvas prints of photovoltaic equipment.
Now the artisanal goods marketplace is helping people get actual solar panels.
The site, which lets people buy and sell handcrafted home goods and other items, announced this week a pilot program to offer discounts to Etsy users in four states when they install solar panels on their homes. That could help offset the company's carbon footprint, 95 percent of which comes from shipping products.
The company is partnering with the solar energy marketplace Geostellar to measure the impact of each solar installation in terms of emissions reduction. Solar users can get discounts of up to $37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, one of the chief greenhouse gases warming the planet and causing the climate to change. Etsy expects its customers to receive a total average discount of $2,000.
Here's how it works, as explained in a joint press release from the companies:
When a new participant applies for the Etsy Solar pilot program, Geostellar will instantly and interactively tailor a solar energy installation and financing plan to meet the unique needs of each individual household. Geostellar will then provide a discount based on the potential contribution of the clean solar energy generation toward the comprehensive emissions reduction goals of the Etsy community. Etsy developed the process according to Gold Standard requirements to enable those reduction rights to be validated, verified and registered as carbon offsets.
Etsy said it hopes to expand the program over the next year or so. For now, the company is choosing its starter states strategically. Etsy is based in Brooklyn, so it wanted to make sure it started in New York. In Florida, where big utility companies in 2014 quashed state-issued solar incentives, Etsy said it felt it could help bolster the industry.
The company also chose West Virginia and Utah because of those states’ long histories with mining and other causes of pollution.
“We felt like we could have a larger climate impact by helping solar there,” Chelsea Mozen, Etsy's senior sustainability specialist for energy and carbon, told The Huffington Post on Thursday.
In February, Etsy became the first U.S. company to be recertified as a benefit corporation, or B corp, by the nonprofit B Lab after going public. As part of the voluntary designation, the company must adhere to strict environmental standards.
"The bigger picture here is that we've been very outspoken about how social good and business can go hand-in-hand -- they're not at odds with each other," Mozen said. "A lot of people on both sides want to say 'If you do social good, then you don't care about profit.' We're really trying to hold them in equal balance. They don't have to be either/or."
American workers are feeling a lot better about their jobs.
Propelled by a stabilizing economy, employee satisfaction is at its highest level in more than a decade, according to a new survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, an association of HR professionals.
Eighty-eight percent of the employees polled reported being satisfied overall with their jobs in 2015. Of them, 37 percent described themselves as “very satisfied,” and 51 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied.” Compare that to results from the organization's 2005 survey, which found just 77 percent of people were pleased with their jobs.
As you can see in the chart below, satisfaction took a hit between 2009 and 2013, the years following the recession. By now, though, people are feeling more confident about the job market, and workers who were unhappy and switched jobs five or six years ago have likely settled into their new roles, contributing to the higher satisfaction level, the SHRM researchers say.
SHRM
Age apparently has little to do with how much people enjoy their work. Millennials' satisfaction ranks about as high as that of older generations.
“Stop the stereotypes," SHRM researcher Christina Lee wrote in a paper released alongside the survey. "Although Millennials may have slightly different mindsets, on the whole, they tend to place significance on several of the same aspects of job satisfaction that Generation Xers and Baby Boomers do.”
Compensation remains highly important in how employees feel about their jobs, with 63 percent of those surveyed citing it as a contributor.
Paychecks, meanwhile, just aren’t growing fast enough. A report last year from the Economic Policy Institute found that growth in worker productivity is outstripping wage growth. From 2000 to 2014, productivity increased by 21.6 percent, while median compensation in the U.S. rose by only 1.8 percent.
Yet compensation ranked only as the second-highest factor contributing to job satisfaction, per the new survey. Topping the list was “respectful treatment of all employees at all levels,” which 67 percent of respondents cited.
“The day-to-day experience is what governs their perspective on their work,” Evren Esen, director of survey programs at the Society for Human Resource Management, told The Huffington Post. “That’s where corporate culture comes into play. You want your supervisor to ask for your ideas.”
Workplaces that promote openness, community and equality are increasingly becoming the norm. While these are aspects valued by all employees, millennials in particular have helped to push that shift forward by being direct about what they expect from their employers.
“They see themselves as equal with who they work with in terms of expressing ideas,” Esen said of millennials. “In that way, by sharing their beliefs with the higher-ups, they are heard more than other generations.”
The expectation that employees are treated equally and fairly, in addition to things like having trustful leaders and transparent management, will only grow as millennials take over the workforce.
Take parental leave: Having a family and young children is hardly a new development, but millennial workers have been more vocal than their older counterparts about having decent company support when they have a newborn. Paid time off is gaining traction quickly, and more and more companies are now offering paid time off to new moms and dads.
“It’s just what they think is normal,” Esen added. “Millennials say, ‘It’s not that way? Why isn’t it that way?’”
The two deaths came in quick succession, shocking the close-knit community of health care workers at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center.
First, in August 2013, an administrative assistant was fatally shot by her estranged husband while she was helping her 3-year-old son get into a car. Five months later, a nurse who worked with oncology patients was stabbed to death by her son after a history of domestic altercations.
"She was very optimistic and positive," said Michele McKee, director of nursing services. "The staff is still struggling with the loss. There was denial. Tears. Anger. And then, guilt. What did we miss? What could we have done?"
While hospital staff had been trained to identify patients who were experiencing domestic violence, they didn't pay the same attention to warning signs in their own peers, said Leslie Hott, St. Joseph's human resources manager.
"Our value statement says, 'loving service, compassionate care,'" Hott said. "We typically think about that for those we care for, but not each other."
That is now changing.
St. Joseph is undergoing an ambitious effort to address domestic violence among its workforce, rolling out an intensive training program to help staff members identify -- and hopefully prevent -- domestic violence, as well as a new workplace policy to support employees who are suffering.
The hospital partnered with Futures Without Violence, a nonprofit that has helped organizations across the country address how domestic violence hurts its workforce. In 2014, Futures began a pilot site project called Low Wage, High Risk to develop best practices for workplaces where employees may be vulnerable to physical and sexual violence. The nonprofit is currently collaborating with tomato crop workers in Florida and restaurant employees in New York, as well as health care workers at St. Joseph in Towson.
The hospital didn’t have a formal workplace domestic violence policy in place when its staffers were killed. Most organizations across the country don’t, even though domestic violence affects 1 in 4 women in the U.S.
There was denial. Tears. Anger. And then, guilt. What did we miss? What could we have done?Michele McKee, director of nursing services
In addition to creating serious safety issues in the workplace, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that domestic violence costs the U.S. at least $8 billion a year in lost productivity and health care costs.
The federal government is trying to set a good example. President Barack Obama issued a memorandum in 2012 that requires all federal agencies to develop policies to support employees whose working lives are affected by domestic violence.
It is often thought to be something that occurs in private, but the pervasive effects of domestic violence can spill over into victims’ work lives. When that happens, experts say, many organizations are ill-equipped to properly support their employees -- in the worst cases, employees may even be penalized or fired.
Maya Raghu, a former lawyer with Futures Without Violence who was involved with the launch of this program, said only a handful of jurisdictions prohibit employment discrimination against survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and about 15 to 20 states provide survivors with unpaid leave.
“Having a source of income is critical to helping survivors and their families separate from the dangerous situation,” she said. “Especially if you are in a job on the lower end of the income spectrum, you may not be able to accumulate savings that you can rely on if you lose your job.”
Being a victim of violence can affect employees in overt and subtle ways. Workers may experience violence on the job, including stalking, threatening calls or physical assaults. Homicide is the second leading cause of injury death for women at work, according to the CDC, and intimate partners commit a significant percentage of those murders.
But even if the actual violence doesn’t take place at work, being in an abusive relationship can still disrupt a victim’s ability to do her job. Abusers may try to sabotage their victims’ financial independence and purposely do things to get them fired, like cut up their work clothes or steal their car keys so they miss their shifts, Raghu explained.
Victims may need to take days off to appear in court, apply for a protection order or seek medical attention. But missing work can put victims of violence in peril of losing their job -- at the exact time they desperately need a regular paycheck.
Hott said the hospital's new policy spells out the support services available to victims, so they know they won’t be penalized for seeking help, and outlines what managers should do if a staff member discloses that they are experiencing domestic violence.
"If it’s brought to our attention, we can respond appropriately," she said. "We want employees to know, we are here for you, we want it safe for you here."
Courtesy of University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical CenterSt. Joseph Medical Center is working to institute a new workplace policy to help employees who are domestic violence survivors.
St. Joseph now works with victims to change their work schedules or location, and can assign them a new phone number or parking spot if requested, Hott said. Victims can also ask for an escort between buildings and to their car, and photos of prohibited people can be distributed to security staff.
Every employee will eventually go through a training about domestic violence and learn what resources are available in the community, Hott said. Educational posters featuring employees will be plastered across the facility, and bathrooms will include pamphlets about warning signs of domestic violence and phone numbers for help.
Ideally, she said, the hospital want to make it easier for employees to come forward and not feel like they have to handle it alone.
"In health care, we want to fix, we want to repair and get you out the door and back into your life. But intimate partner violence isn’t cut and dry," she said. "That’s OK. The goal is to make it not a secret anymore."
Hott said she hopes the hospital’s policy and training program will be used as a model for other health care organizations across the country. It’s an especially important sector to target, she said, as women make up nearly 80 percent of the health care workforce.
A young crepe myrtle tree stands at the entrance of the parking lot at St. Joseph.
Each morning when employees arrive for work, they pass the flowering tree, which was planted in memory of the two employees who were fatal victims of domestic violence.
"I pull into the garage that way every morning and I look at it," McKee said. "Now that it’s spring time, we look forward to it blooming."
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Melissa Jeltsen covers domestic violence and other issues related to women’s health, safety and security. Tips? Feedback? Send an email or follow her on Twitter.
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Mitsubishi Motors Corp said it falsified fuel economy test data to make emissions levels look more favorable, and its shares slumped more than 15 percent, wiping $1.2 billion from its market value on Wednesday.
Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Japan's sixth-largest automaker by market value, bowed in apology at a news conference in Tokyo for what is the biggest scandal at Mitsubishi Motors since a defect cover-up over a decade ago.
Toru Hanai / ReutersThe scandal prompted Tetsuro Aikawa, president of Mitsubishi Motors, to bow in apology at a news conference in Tokyo.
Shares in the company closed down more than 15 percent at 733 yen, the stock's biggest one-day drop in almost 12 years.
In 2000, Mitsubishi Motors revealed that it covered up safety records and customer complaints. Four years later it admitted to broader problems going back decades. It was Japan's worst automotive recall scandal at the time.
The company said on Wednesday the test manipulation involved 625,000 vehicles produced since mid-2013. These include its eK mini-wagon as well as 468,000 similar cars it made for Nissan Motor.
It said it would stop making and selling those cars, and has set up an independent panel to investigate the issue.
Mitsubishi Motors sold just over 1 million cars last year.
Mitsubishi Motors is the first Japanese automaker to report misconduct involving fuel economy tests since Volkswagen was discovered last year to have cheated diesel emissions tests in the United States and elsewhere.
South Korean car makers Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp in 2014 agreed to pay $350 million in penalties to the U.S. government for overstating their vehicles' fuel economy ratings. They also resolved claims from car owners.
