Atco to use organic waste to produce 'renewable natural gas'

CALGARY — Atco Energy Solutions has announced the construction of a new facility that will use the byproducts from organic waste to produce "renewable" natural gas.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The facility, a first for the Calgary-based company, will be built north of Vegreville, Alta. and should be up and running by late 2022. It will process agricultural manure and other organic waste products from nearby municipalities, harvesting the methane emissions that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

The facility will also produce fertilizer as a byproduct, to be used by local farmers. Vegreville-based biofuels company Future Fuel Ltd. will partner with Atco to develop the project.

Mike Shaw, senior vice-president for Atco Energy Solutions, said the facility will be one of the largest renewable natural gas facilities in Canada once completed. He said it will produce enough natural gas to heat 2,500 homes per year and reduce carbon emissions by 20,000 tonnes annually.

"One tonne of methane emissions is equivalent to about 28 tonnes of C02 emissions on a greenhouse gas equivalency perspective," Shaw said. "Fugitive methane emissions from things like wastewater treatment, or from organic decomposition — those are significant contributors to greenhouse gases."

While the Vegreville facility will be Atco's first renewable fuels project, Shaw said it is in the process of developing others in order to help meet its climate change and sustainability targets. Renewable natural gas can be produced from a variety of feedstocks, including residential and commercial organics, waste from water treatment plants, and landfill waste. It can be injected into the existing natural gas grid just like conventional natural gas.

Video: Energy waste in condos (Global News)

With its history of gas handling and upgrading, Atco is uniquely suited to move into the renewable natural gas space, Shaw said.He said Canada produces six petajoules (PJ) per year of renewable natural gas currently — less than one per cent of the country's overall natural gas usage — but has the potential to generate up to 150 PJ per year, according to industry estimates.

"There's only a couple dozen of these facilities across Canada today, but we do expect to see significant growth in this space," Shaw said.

In addition to renewable natural gas, Atco is investing in hydrogen as part of its overall climate change strategy. The company is partnering with Suncor Energy Inc. on a potential hydrogen project to be built near Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.

That project could produce more than 300,000 tonnes per year of hydrogen and reduce Alberta's carbon emissions by more than two million tonnes per year, Atco said. The project is still in the early design stage.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 9, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:ACO.X, TSX:SU)

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press

Pandemic garbage boom ignites debate over waste as energy

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — America remains awash in refuse as new cases of the coronavirus decline — and that has reignited a debate about the sustainability of burning more trash to create energy.

Waste-to-energy plants, which produce most of their power by incinerating trash, make up only about half a percent of the electricity generation in the U.S. But the plants have long aroused considerable opposition from environmentalists and local residents who decry the facilities as polluters, eyesores and generators of foul odor.

The industry has been in retreat mode in the U.S., with dozens of plants closing since 2000 amid local opposition and emissions concerns. But members of the industry said they see the increase in garbage production in the U.S. in recent months as a chance to play a bigger role in creating energy and fighting climate change by keeping waste out of methane-creating landfills.

One estimate from the Solid Waste Association of North America placed the amount of residential waste up as much as 8% this spring compared to the previous spring. And more trash is on the way. A 2020 study in the journal Science stated that the global plastic packaging market size was projected to grow from more than $900 billion in 2019 to more than $1 trillion by 2021, growth largely due to the pandemic response.

That trash has to go somewhere, and using it as a resource makes more sense than sending it to landfills, said James Regan, senior director of corporate communications for Covanta, the largest player in the industry. The company currently processes about 20 million tons (18,144 metric tons) of waste a year to power about a million homes, and it could do more, he said.

“If we're going to reach climate goals by 2050, the waste sector really can and should be part of that story,” Regan said. “This is low-hanging fruit. So what are we waiting for?”

Waste-to-energy plants are expanding in other parts of the world, as more than 120 plants have been built in the last five years. They're concentrated most heavily in Europe and Asia. But the most recent new plant in the U.S. opened in 2015 in Palm Beach County, Florida.

President Joe Biden, meanwhile, has put a premium on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and creation of more renewable energy, and while that push has focused heavily on wind and solar power, the administration has also acknowledged a place for waste-to-energy conversion. The White House said in an April statement that the U.S. “can address carbon pollution from industrial processes” by including waste-to-power in the mix.

Any attempt to build more plants in the U.S. will be met with resistance, said Mike Ewall, director of the Philadelphia-based Energy Justice Network. The plants represent a threat to human and environmental health because they emit chemicals such as mercury and dioxin, he said. Communities have also opposed waste-to-energy plants because of concerns about airborne particulate matter that can have negative health consequences.

“The notion that this industry is going to be building new plants is just ludicrous,” Ewall said.

But the fact remains that creation of garbage has increased, and municipalities have to deal with it somehow. One study, published in the scientific journal Environment, Development and Sustainability, attributed the increase to factors such as panic buying and more reliance on single-use items. Medical waste has also increased due to the heavy use of personal protective equipment, the study found.

As the pandemic has abated in many part of the country and the economy has reopened, commercial waste has increased, but residential waste creation has not slowed. In Portland, Maine, residential waste was up 12% and commercial was up 2% in June, said Matt Grondin, spokesman for ecomaine, which operates a waste-to-energy power plant.

Converting all that new garbage to energy is the best available option, Grondin said.

“It's a lot of garbage. You can probably imagine with a lot of people at home, cleaning out, doing projects, that accounts for a lot of the increase," he said. “It has to go somewhere.”

Other communities have looked at garbage-to-gas production as a way to get energy from swelling amounts of trash. These plants use strategies such as compacting garbage and sealing it to capture methane that can be used as fuel.

The garbage-to-gas program at the landfill in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, started as a way to get carbon credits by burning off methane, said Richard LeBouef, executive director of the parish Solid Waste Disposal District.

Now natural gas from the landfill powers contractor Waste Connection’s 12 garbage trucks, the landfill’s five pickup trucks and six trucks for litter abatement teams. The district has put $2.7 million, plus maintenance, into the system.

“What we’re saving monetarily is not super-substantial but in accordance with the green issue I think it’s a great thing,” LeBouef said.

Waste-to-energy plants typically create power by burning the trash at about 2,000 degrees (1,093 degrees Celsius) and using it to boil water that is turned into steam, superheated and sent to a turbine to make electricity.

Attempts to convert more pandemic garbage into energy are likely to be controversial, said Frank Roethel, director of the Waste Reduction and Management Institute at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. But using the trash to make power beats letting it pile up, he said.

“Here you have the Biden administration talking about climate change, and talking about strategies that could help reduce emissions," Roethel said. "And waste to energy doesn’t necessarily get the recognition, but it could certainly reduce emissions.”

___

Associated Press writer Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans contributed to this report.

___

Follow Patrick Whittle on Twitter: @pxwhittle

Patrick Whittle, The Associated Press

This is the fight Europe has needed for years

Analysis by Luke McGee, CNN 10/7/2021

The European Union is bracing for a difficult autumn.

© Bernadett Szabo/Reuters/FILE Hungary, led by the right-wing populist Viktor Orban, brought into effect a new law that bans information which "promotes" homosexuality and gender change being used in schools.

Beyond the nasty fallout from Brexit -- arguably the greatest crisis to befall the bloc since its creation -- and recovering from a global pandemic, the 27 member states are gearing up for a huge row over LGBT rights, the rule of law and the role both should play in the Union's future.

Tensions have been bubbling for a while, but in recent days, two events have made it clear that the issue cannot be ignored any longer.

Hungary, led by the right-wing populist Viktor Orban, brought into effect a new law that bans information which "promotes" homosexuality and gender change being used in schools. The government claims it is doing to so protect children, though critics believe that prohibiting access to such information stigmatizes LGBTQ people, putting them at risk of discrimination and violence.

 An Equality Parade marched through Warsaw on June 19 -- after being canceled in 2020 due to Covid restrictions.

On Wednesday of this week, Members of the European Parliament presented a legal case for the EU Commission, the bloc's executive branch, to strip Hungary of its EU funding as it is not meeting its obligations as an EU member state.

While the case makes no mention of Hungary's anti-LGBTQ laws, focusing instead on the country's assaults on judicial independence, among other things, the MEPs presenting the case made clear to CNN that the two are linked.

Katalin Csech, a Hungarian opposition MEP, explained that the report "establishes the legal case" for stripping funding from Orban's government via what is called the rule of law mechanism, "based on his rampant corruption." She adds that corruption is "intimately linked to human rights abuses like the recent attack against the LGBTI community" because "an independent judiciary should be protecting LGBTI people's rights too."

Her German colleague, Daniel Freund, explains that the focus on the rule of law is part of a wider effort to create a cumulative pressure on Budapest.

"If we can cut their funding, which is the only language Orban really understands, for his assaults on the judiciary, then hopefully we can use it to build cumulative pressure for violations of the EU treaties in other areas."

The new law is part of a years-long erosion of rights for LGBTQ people. Luca Dudits from the Háttér Society, a Hungarian LGBTQ advocacy group, points to a long list of repressive actions, from banning same-sex marriage in 2011 to barring non-married couples from adopting last year.

The reality of having an openly homophobic and transphobic government and little remaining independent media has, Dudits explains, created a dangerous "echo chamber" placing vulnerable people at serious risk of discrimination and violence.

"The invisibility means that there's no way that LGBTI people really feel that there is a safe environment to come out, and obviously this also impacts social acceptance. It also affects mental health, if you are constantly hearing that you are an immoral person who is a danger to children."


'Hateful rhetoric' in the bloc

Hungary is not the only EU nation currently under fire for its treatment of LGBT people.

Poland's infamous LGBT-free zones, areas where opposition to LGBT "ideology" is symbolically written into law at state and local levels, have been criticized widely as being in violation of the EU's commitments to human rights and, in some cases, have seen applications for EU funding pulled.

Karolina Gierdal, a lawyer for the Polish advocacy group Campaign Against Homophobia, told CNN that as long as "politicians can get away with their hateful rhetoric and actions, they signal to citizens that "harassing the LGBTQI community is not discrimination and that their homophobia or transphobia is justified and may be acted upon."

Critics in Poland would like to see more action from Brussels. Sylwia Spurek, Poland's former deputy to the ombudsman on equal treatment who is now an opposition MEP, believes that the current debate around the rule of law is too narrow "because everybody is talking about, about independence of judiciary, about freedom of media, about a shrinking civic space."

She is trying to convince the Commission to see human rights as part of the rule of law. Her argument is that Article 2 of the EU treaty concerns respect "for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities."

Spurek believes that violating this part of the treaty is clearly an infringement of the rule of law, which is in itself grounds for pulling EU funds from the Polish government.

The problems Poland and Hungary's opponents face are that not everyone agrees on the legal point, that the action that the Commission or EU Council (represented by the elected governments of the 27 member states) could actually take is politically limited, and that the wider consequences of unilateral action could create an even bigger mess.

"It's all very tense. Several of the more liberal member states are uncomfortable with asking their taxpayers to fund countries whose behavior they abhor," said one EU diplomat. Those member states want the Commission to act, "because the divisions between the member states in the Council make any serious actions very hard, especially in areas where unanimous votes are required," the diplomat added.

Normally, divisions in the Council are characterized by narrow national, often economic, self-interest. On the matter of LGBT rights, the fury from more liberal member states is palpable.

At the last Council summit on June 24, Mark Rutte, the Dutch PM, openly said that Hungary "has no place in the EU anymore," before the leaders had even met.

In the closed-door session, Luxembourg's Prime Minister, Xavier Bettel, starkly warned Orban: "My grandfather was Jewish, I'm gay and can live freely. And then I read this law. I know what happens when you turn people into a minority," according to a Luxembourg government official. And 17 member states pointedly signed a letter to the presidents of the EU institutions, reiterating their support for human rights as outlined in Article 2.

For its part, the Commission is concerned that any unilateral action could backfire politically. "If the Commission starts saying it wants to keep money from these countries, they are able to say 'look, Brussels wants to hurt us and I am the best person to protect you,' strengthening their domestic political grip," a second EU official explained.

From the perspective of Hungary and Poland and their allies around Europe, they are simply showing "respect for Europe's Judeo-Christian heritage."

According to a statement that was co-signed by the governments of Hungary and Poland and supportive parties elsewhere, the EU is becoming "a tool of radical forces" that want to erase national identity and replace it with "a European Superstate." Their statement claimed they wanted to ensure that their traditional values are present as the debate over Europe's future enters a new phase.

This is where things get very messy and somewhat existential for the bloc.

The fight for the heart of Europe

The words "future of Europe" get thrown around a lot by people in Brussels, but usually by people who are largely supportive of the EU becoming institutionally stronger and more centralized.

The fact the likes of Poland, Hungary and their supporters, including France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and Italy's populist firebrand Matteo Salvini, put out a statement on their vision for the future of the EU is chilling for Europhiles.

Those who love Europe generally accept it needs to evolve to survive.

"Right now, the union is not fit for the challenges of the future. We can either go into the direction of a stronger Europe with more powers, or a weaker Europe, which is fragmented. I firmly believe that [latter version of] Europe has no future," says Csech.

Spurek agrees that "if the Commission, the Council, has no determination to protect these values, there is no future of the European Union."

So many of the problems facing Europe had been masked by the unity Brexit afforded the 27 as they confronted a single foe, despite the challenges that posed. With the UK gone, the fight for the heart of the European project is well underway.

There is no easy answer. "The EU needs to simultaneously be a shared set of values but also flexible enough to accommodate every perspective on that dividing line," says Ronan McCrea, professor of European law at University College London.

That dividing line is often characterized seen as East versus West, old members versus new. Many of those member states who joined as former Soviet satellites had to jump through hoops to prove they were up to becoming part of the liberal, rule-based West. But as McCrea puts it, "the EU is a bit like a nightclub with ferocious bouncers on the door but weak internal security. Once you've passed the accession process and are in, you can break the rules with much less serious consequences."

The EU has been historically good at fudging issues to avoid catastrophe. However, most of its crises have been economic and overtly political. This degree of conflict over rival values and culture is fairly new territory. And what's panicking so many in Brussels is that, unlike an economic or political crisis, they sincerely have no idea how this ultimately plays out.

Record Brazilian drought causes coffee prices to spike to highest level in years
Pete Evans 

CBC

© Patricia Monteiro/Bloomberg

 A worker walks beside drying coffee beans on a farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The coffee-producing region has been walloped by a lack of water this year.

A once-in-a-century drought in Brazil has walloped the world's largest coffee crop, pushing up wholesale prices to their highest level in years.

The going rate for prized arabica beans was almost $1.70 US a pound at one point this week. That's almost 60 per cent higher than it was last summer.

Abnormally dry conditions late in the growing season in Brazil are the main culprit, as Brazil typically produces about one-third of the world's supply of coffee beans.

Rainfall in the agricultural region of Minas Gerais was the lowest on record in the summer months, which stretch from January to April in Brazil. That's normally when coffee plants soak up moisture ahead of the drier winter months, when they are harvested. But this year, the rains never came.

"It seems to have happened at a crucial time, when the crop needs to be absorbing moisture in order to flourish and blossom. And it just didn't happen in time, so the yields were severely impaired," said Kona Haque, head of research with London-based agricultural commodities trader EDF & Man.

It's hard to get a handle on just how small the crop will be, but experts in the field agree it's significant and enough to put world supply below demand for the first time in years.

Price of coffee has surged this year

Part of the problem is that 2021 was always more likely to be a weaker than normal year for coffee. That's because like many tree crops, coffee operates on a two-year cycle, where years of plenty tend to be followed by years where the plants produce less.

"They follow this pattern of what's known in the industry as biennial bearing," said Stuart McCook, an economics professor at the University of Guelph who follows the coffee industry closely.

© Scott Galley/CBC COVID-19 caused sales at coffee chains to decline by almost one-quarter. The average prices paid for various types of coffee drinks are shown.

2020 was a bumper crop for coffee, and because that bearing was so heavy, McCook said, this past season, "a lot of farmers pruned back the branches of their coffee trees so that the tree ... could develop new healthy tissue to bear future crops."

The bumper crop last year looked even bigger than it would normally be because of the pandemic, which uprooted the traditional supply-and-demand patterns for coffee.

"The world is slowly coming out of a lockdown and the pandemic, and that means consumption of coffee outside of the home is beginning to recover," said Haque. "Demand for outdoor coffee consumption was … expected to recover. And just as this demand starts to recover, you're seeing this shortage of supply."

Add it all up and it's a recipe for record prices, from farm to cup.

Losel Tethong, the founder and president of Propeller Coffee, an artisanal coffee roaster in Toronto, sources as much of his coffee as he can from independent farmers because he's a big believer in sustainability, so he's glad to see higher prices for them. But it's also a challenge for him to sell the finished product without passing those costs on.

"It's great to see that price go up; it's just trying to absorb that in less than a year, it's tough," he said.

Like many retail-focused businesses, when the pandemic hit, Tethong said he lost about 80 per cent of his customer base. He has managed to slowly and steadily grow his e-commerce business, selling bags direct to consumers, but COVID-19 has increased the cost of just about everything, including supplies like filters and machines, and transportation costs.

"We haven't raised prices as a company in five years," he said. "We're continuing to do everything we can to keep our prices down, but this year, we implemented a small five-per-cent price rise on our retail price of coffee."

That five-per-cent hike for the good stuff is nothing compared to what's happening with the cheaper, mass-produced blends, said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The price of coffee at the grocery store is up by 17 per cent since January.

"There's something going on," he said. "Whatever food product is out there, manufacturers [are] charging more to grocers and that will catch up with us eventually."
Impact of climate change

It's not just tropical crops like coffee that are impacted.

Canadian staples such as wheat, canola and barley are also seeing record prices right now because extreme heat in Western Canada has drastically impacted this year's crop yields.

Just as is the case with those crops, experts who spoke to CBC News say climate change is playing a role with coffee, too — which means drinkers should get used to jittery java prices.

On top of the drought that hurt this year's harvest, Brazilian farmers were also hit by previously unheard of frost, which is bad news for next year's crop.

"This drought is not a normal occurrence, but at the same time, the frost that just happened last week is the second time in three years that it's happened," Haque noted.

"It's possible that we're going to have to live with more extreme weather conditions. And if that's the case then ... supply will vary, and when supply varies, inevitably prices are going to go up and down."

That means for coffee lovers, uncertainty will be the name of the game from now on.

As Tethong puts it, "we're kind of up against the clock with climate change and other pressures."

VIDEO

How climate change is affecting coffee

Duration: 00:53 

Stuart McCook, a professor at the University of Guelph with an interest in export commodities, says coffee plants are reacting to the changing climate by growing in places where they didn't before, and dying out in other places.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/how-climate-change-is-affecting-coffee/vi-AALYb39?ocid=msedgntp

Amazon managers have been told to keep performance-improvement plans secret from employees, according to a report

kshalvey@insider.com (Kevin Shalvey) 
Amazon's New York office. Mark Lennihan/AP Photo

Amazon managers were reportedly told to keep secret their staffers' performance-improvement plans.

"Do not discuss Focus with employees," read an internal Amazon page, The Seattle Times reported.

An employee told the Seattle Times he was in a "weird, nebulous performance hell for a few years."

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Amazon managers have been directed not to tell employees when they are put on performance-improvement plans, The Seattle Times reported.

The guidance was posted on an internal webpage with Q&As for managers, the report said. Amazon uses a complex system for rating employee performance, with the staffers rated "least effective" being placed on performance-improvement plans under a system known as Focus.

More than a dozen current and former Amazon employees told Insider in May that the company's performance programs were unfair, too ambiguous, and gave managers too much power over their careers - and makes it that much easier for them to get let go from the company.

According to the Seattle Times report, a message on the internal Amazon site reads: "Do not discuss Focus with employees. Instead, tell the employee that their performance is not meeting expectations, the specific areas where they need to improve, and offer feedback and support to help them improve."

Internal documentation reviewed by the Times asked managers to not tell their direct reports about their Focus-system status unless they explicitly asked about it.

Performance-improvement plans are common in Silicon Valley, where employee productivity is often tracked by the hour, if not the minute.

Many companies are open about the process, giving low-performing employees goals to push them to become more productive before their next review cycle. At some companies, performance-improvement plans are the first step toward firing an employee.

Insider has reached out to Amazon for comment.

"Like most employers, we provide managers with tools to help employees improve their performance and grow in their careers at Amazon," an Amazon spokesperson told the Times. "This includes resources for employees who are not meeting expectations and may require additional coaching."

One unnamed engineer told the Seattle Times that he'd been on a performance-improvement plan for a year and a half, but only found out when he was brought under a new manager.

"I ended up in this weird, nebulous performance hell for a few years," he said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Retail workers in unions reap higher wages even as U.S. organizers suffer setbacks
By Richa Naidu 1 day ago

© Reuters/Adam Ryan 

Target worker Adam Ryan stands in the stockroom of his store in Christiansburg, Virginia

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Wally Waugh, 57, a front-end manager at a Stop & Shop supermarket in Oyster Bay, New York, makes over $1,150 a week. He is a union member.

Adam Ryan, 33, a sales clerk at a Christiansburg, Virginia, Target, makes $380 to $460 a week. He is not.

While the gap in how much they earn arises in part from the very different regions where both live and work, it is also in line with a Reuters analysis of U.S. retail wages, whose findings are previously unreported. After reviewing two decades of retail wages, Reuters found that union workers get paid more on average - and that the gap is widening.

Reuters examined a three-year rolling average of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and found that the weekly pay differential between union and nonunion workers in the U.S. retail sector widened significantly between 2013 and 2019 - from nearly $20 to more than $50.

Graphic: Wage advantage for retail union workers increases - https://graphics.reuters.com/RETAIL-UNIONS/rlgvddjzevo/chart.png

By the end of 2019, a unionized retail worker was taking home an average of about $730 a week, compared with over $670 weekly for a nonunionized worker, the Reuters analysis shows.(Reuters did not count 2020, a year largely viewed by economists as a pandemic-hit outlier.)

Unionization, worker treatment and wages in the retail industry have been in the spotlight this year because of a highly publicized attempt by Amazon.com Inc workers to organize at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

Amazon argued to its workers in Alabama that their benefits might decline if a union bargained on their behalf. But the Reuters analysis challenges Amazon's claim.

A sustained four-year labor squeeze in the retail industry - combined with independent movements to push minimum wages in U.S. states to $15 an hour - is providing unions more power to bargain longer, and to give workers more regular hours and better pay, said Kenneth Dau-Schmidt, professor of labor and employment law at Indiana University Bloomington.

Workers often fear that retailers will move to close stores and warehouses or fire people who try to organize. Amazon's agents allegedly warned that the company could shut the Bessemer, Alabama, facility if a union took root, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). Amazon denied threatening a warehouse closure or layoffs.

Earlier this year, workers at the facility voted against unionizing by a margin of more than 2-to-1.

'TRIGGER WORD'

Seventy-two percent of the 5,804 public and private union elections in the past five years were in favor of workers trying to organize, according to data from the U.S. National Labor Relations Board. Nine out of every 10 petitions to form bargaining units were won by unions last year, the highest rate of success in at least a decade.

Graphic: More union wins amid worries about Covid-19 working conditions - https://graphics.reuters.com/RETAIL-UNIONS/bdwpkwjdlpm/chart.png

But the percentage of unionized retail workers has been declining over the past four decades. Last year, only 4.6% of U.S. retail trade workers were unionized, down from about 9% in the early 1980s and from about 5% a decade ago, according to Unionstats.com.

"'Union' is a trigger word for a lot of managers. They’ll start finding things to let you go for and they’ll get you out,” said David, 39, a Walmart store worker in Stillwater, Oklahoma, who declined to provide his last name for fear of losing his job. Walmart Inc, which declined to comment, is the biggest private employer in the United States and has no unionized stores.

About two-thirds of Kroger Co workers are unionized - unlike Amazon, Target Corp and Walmart, which have no organized workers. During quarterly conference calls with analysts, Kroger has repeatedly called out union-negotiated benefits that put it under financial "pressure" that its competitors do not face.

The grocer - whose percentage of unionized workers has decreased since 2013 - said last month it has to work out several major union contracts this year, including for workers in Atlanta, Houston and Memphis.

Both Kroger and Target flag collective bargaining in their annual regulatory filings as a potential risk to operations that could increase the cost of labor.

A Kroger spokeswoman said the company has contingency plans to keep facilities running in the event of labor disputes.

To dissuade workers from organizing, retailers warn workers of the burden of paying union dues. One Amazon worker, Darryl Richardson, said that ahead of the Alabama vote on whether to unionize, Amazon put signs reading "Where will your union dues go?" on bathroom-stall doors. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Dues vary from union to union, but are typically around 1.5%-2% of a worker’s paycheck, labor experts say.

"When you aren’t making that much money, any amount is a lot," said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

But the Amazon campaign in Alabama has renewed interest in organizing across the retail industry and emboldened people like Ryan, who has been skeptical of unions in the past. Publicity around the Amazon vote made him contemplate more seriously "what a union is, how they can maybe help us with the issues we're dealing with," he said.

Target told Reuters in a statement it has "significantly invested in hours," raised wages and offered multiple bonuses to frontline workers throughout the pandemic.

Citing "low wages" and "wage theft" at Amazon as some key drivers, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters last month entered the fray by voting to lay the ground work to organize workers at the company's warehouses. Amazon says it already pays workers fairly. The company in 2018 raised its minimum pay for U.S. workers to $15 an hour.

POWER SHIFT

Reuters found that one factor behind the widening wage gap is that unionized retail workers tend to work more hours per week, and more predictable hours, than nonunionized workers, as illustrated by Ryan and Waugh.

Waugh's full-time schedule is largely stable at 40 hours per week, set by his contract with Stop & Shop, which is owned by Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize. He earns more when he works overtime, on Sundays or on holidays, according to the RWDSU, which represents him.

Target's Ryan, meanwhile, works a variable schedule from 25 to 30 hours a week, depending on the store's anticipated traffic. Ryan said that even if Target raises his hourly base pay, he will not necessarily earn more per week.

"Fifteen dollars an hour doesn't mean anything if that raise in wages is offset by a reduction in hours," he said. Twenty-seven percent of U.S. retail and wholesale workers worked 34 hours a week or fewer in 2019, according to the BLS.

As shoppers bought more goods online, retail workers who were paid on commission saw their incomes drop. But companies from Kohl's Corp to Macy's Inc also cut hundreds of thousands of jobs on sales floors and in stock rooms, leaving payrolls lean. Today two employees perform work that years earlier was performed by ten, unions say. That gives unions some leverage.

Plagued by high turnover, major companies like Walmart and Target have since 2016 sharply raised wages to try to retain more workers. Those wage hikes fostered a spillover effect of better and more frequent increases at the bargaining table at other retailers such as Kroger and Stop & Shop.

Kroger said it provides comprehensive compensation packages, including competitive wages, healthcare and retirement.

In 2019, over 30,000 United Food and Commercial Workers Union-represented Stop & Shop workers in the U.S. Northeast went on strike for 11 days until the chain agreed to raise pay higher than what it offered prior to the strike.

"Sometimes we get two raises a year and that compounds over the years," Waugh said. "For those of us who are fortunate enough to stick around, it puts us in a very, very good position."

(Reporting by Richa Naidu in Chicago; Additional reporting by Dan Burns in New York; Editing by Vanessa O'Connell, Ryan McNeill, Benjamin Lesser and Matthew Lewis)

Biden's executive order aims to stop businesses suppressing workers' wages

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean,Anna Cooban) 20 hrs ago

President Joe Biden. Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images

Biden will issue an executive order Friday designed to stop firms collaborating to suppress wages.

He will push the FTC and DOJ for tougher guidance to stop companies sharing wage and benefit data.

Biden will call on the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements, per notes from the White House.

President Joe Biden is set to crack down on employers who collaborate to suppress workers' wages in an executive order scheduled for Friday.

The White House published details of the upcoming order Friday morning. Biden will push the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to "prevent employers from collaborating to suppress wages or reduce benefits" by sharing wage and benefit information with each other.

The executive order will say that workers may be "harmed" by existing DOJ and FTC guidance that allows third parties to make wage data available to employers in certain circumstances without triggering antitrust scrutiny, per the White House's notes.

Workers' wages tend to decrease when there are fewer employers competing with each other for their labor, according to research from the University of Pennsylvania.

The order, which focuses on promoting economic competition, will aim to help more businesses break into markets dominated by large employers, which it says should give workers more chance to negotiate higher pay.

The president has urged Congress to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which would include protections for workers who want to unionize and collectively bargain for better pay.

In Friday's order, Biden will also call for the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements and "unnecessary, cumbersome" occupational licensing restrictions. These would make it easier for workers to change jobs and help raise wages, per the White House's briefing notes.

Tens of millions of Americans, including people working in construction and retail, have to sign non-compete agreements as a condition of getting a job, which makes it harder for them to switch to better-paying options and "stifles" competition, the order will say, per the White House.

It will also say that nearly 30% of jobs in the US require an occupational license, and that there is huge disparity in license requirements between states, which makes it difficult for people to move between states.

Biden has appointed Lina Khan, a vocal critic of big tech, as FTC chair in a decision widely thought to signal his administration's desire to bring in strict antitrust rules to prevent tech companies from monopolizing markets.

Read the original article on Business Insider

ANOTHER GOP BIG LIE

There's 'little sign' that ending unemployment benefits early pushed people back to work, JPMorgan says

insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) 

Carlos Ponce joins a protest in in Miami Springs, Florida, asking senators to continue 

unemployment benefits past July 31, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Over half of the states in the US have ended federal benefits ahead of their September expiration.

Many governors cited the enhanced benefits as keeping workers out of the labor force.

But a JPMorgan note says there's little sign that cutting off benefits brought workers back.

Over half of the states in the US have opted out of federal unemployment benefits early, citing the programs as potentially fueling the current labor shortage.

But that doesn't seem to quite be the case. A Friday note from JPMorgan researchers Peter B McCrory and Jesse Edgerton looks at the impact on unemployment claims and spending following states officially opting out of their benefits.

They find that there's "little sign of any differential improvement in unemployment claims or in several spending and activity measures in these states." There's perhaps a little jolt in spending on restaurants - which could be chalked up to workers returning to staff up eateries - but even that estimation might still be closer to no effect.

A previous note from JPMorgan said the decision to cut off unemployment benefits ahead of their scheduled expiration in September was "tied to politics, not economics."

The role that unemployment benefits ending has played in getting more people to work is murky. For instance, The Wall Street Journal reported in late June that the number of UI recipients was falling in states that opted out early, but Insider's Ayelet Sheffey reported that May saw strong job growth while enhanced benefits were still in place. June also saw major payroll additions, but the unemployment rate actually went up that month. All in all, the broader impact on the labor situation is still a bit of a question mark.

On the other side of the equation are the 4 million Americans who will see some or all of their benefits cut off early. Two federal programs extended who's eligible for unemployment benefits - notably bringing gig workers into the fold - and extended how many weeks workers were eligible to receive benefits. In many states, those programs are winding down completely this summer, leaving workers without any UI income. Workers have previously told Insider that the loss of those benefits will result in them losing their homes, or exposing themselves to risky work environments.

But some jobless Americans have struck back against benefits from being ended by filing lawsuits in several states. They're already seeing some early wins, with judges deciding that benefits should be temporarily reinstated in Indiana and Maryland while the lawsuits proceed.

"I think it certainly has the potential to start more cases," Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow and jobless-policy expert at the left-leaning Century Foundation, previously told Insider. "The legal argument made in Indiana was based on a set of components that were not unique to Indiana law."
Read the original article on Business Insider
TOPICS FOR YOU

#CANCELTOKYOOLYMPICS

Factbox-Olympics-Money, money, money: the cost of Tokyo’s pandemic-delayed Games

By Elaine Lies  July 8, 2021

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games is seen through signboards, in Toky

TOKYO (Reuters) – Despite public opposition in Japan over fears of new coronavirus surges, the Tokyo Olympic Games that were postponed last year will get under way on July 23, with spectators now barred from all events.

The delay and crowd restrictions on the Games, which will end on Aug. 8, have been expensive in various ways. Here are some areas where costs have grown, and where income that had been expected will not materialise.

OLYMPIC COSTS

Organisers said last December that the entire cost of holding the Games would be about $15.4 billion, including $2.8 billion for the unprecedented postponement from 2020. Since then, the projected bill for postponement has risen to $3 billion.

Organisers initially sold some 4.48 million tickets and the government had expected a tourism windfall, before first overseas visitors and then domestic spectators were ruled out.

Ticket revenues had initially been expected at about 90 billion yen ($815 million) but will now drop to virtually nothing.

SPONSORS

More than 60 Japanese companies together paid a record of more than $3 billion to sponsor the Games. Sponsors paid another $200 million to extend contracts after the Olympics were postponed.

That does not include partnerships with Japanese companies Toyota, Bridgestone, and Panasonic, and others such as South Korea’s Samsung, which through a separate programme for top-tier sponsors have separate deals with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

INSURANCE

Although the cancellation scenario is looking less likely by the day, global insurers would face a hefty bill should that happen, with estimates running to a loss of up to $3 billion.

The IOC takes out about $800 million of protection for each Summer Games, which covers most of the roughly $1 billion investment it makes in each host city.

Organisers in Tokyo will have taken out a further policy, estimated at about $650 million.

Analysts with financial services firm Jefferies estimate the insured cost of the 2020 Olympics at $2 billion, including TV rights and sponsorship, plus $600 million for hospitality.

MEDIA

Broadcaster NBCUniversal had reaped a record $1.25 billion in U.S. national advertising spending for the Games before they were postponed in 2020 and has spent the past year trying to get sponsors to support them again this year, entertainment business magazine Variety reported.

NBCUniversal’s parent company Comcast agreed to pay $4.38 billion for U.S. media rights to four Olympics from 2014 to 2020, it added.

Discovery Communications, the parent of television channel Eurosport, has agreed to pay 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) to screen the Olympics from 2018 to 2024 across Europe.

HIT TO THE ECONOMY

The Olympics were originally expected to be a huge tourist draw, but banning foreign spectators put paid to hopes of an early recovery in inbound tourism, frozen since last year.

In 2019, Japan hosted 31.9 million foreign visitors, who spent nearly 4.81 trillion yen ($44 billion). Numbers plunged 87% in 2020 to just 4.1 million, a 22-year low.

Though highly unlikely now, a full cancellation would mean lost stimulus of 1.8 trillion yen, or 0.33% of gross domestic product (GDP), the Nomura Research Institute said in a recent report.

But Nomura Research Institute executive economist Takahide Kiuchi said that loss would pale in comparison with the economic hit from emergency curbs if the Games turned into a coronavirus super-spreader event.

“If the (Olympic Games) trigger the spread of infections and necessitate another emergency declaration, then the economic loss would be much greater,” Kiuchi said.

($1 = 110.4000 yen)

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

 

  

Oman: Will the Protests and Covid-19 Lead to Structural Economic Reform?

The recent protests and the effects of the pandemic have emphasized the need to expedite structural economic reforms.



FATMA AL-ARIMI
July 07, 2021
عربي

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic coincided with the beginning of Sultan Haitham Bin Tariq’s reign in January 2020. In his second speech, Sultan Haitham stressed the need for streamlining procedures, fighting corruption, and improving governance, integrity, and accountability as well as restructuring the state’s administrative apparatus and modernizing its legislation. The transfer of power was seen as an opportunity to revive Oman’s economy, most importantly by restoring the balance among the government, private sector, and civil society. More recently, protests across Oman have reignited the push for a better economic situation with one clear demand: employment.

Although the country adopted Oman Vision 2040, a long-term strategic plan with economic and social goals, the government needed an emergency mid-term financial plan to alleviate current fiscal issues and to pave the way for the vision's implementation.1 In September 2019, the government began working on a fiscal plan to address Oman’s economic challenges, especially those that arose during the country’s ninth five-year plan. The key problem was the expansion of the administrative apparatus during the last few years of the late Sultan Qaboos’ reign, when he passed many tasks off to people whom he trusted to run the affairs of the state. The first draft of the Medium-Term Fiscal Plan (MTFP), referred to as Tawazon (“Balance”), was presented to Sultan Haitham in February 2020.2 However, the effects of the pandemic were not felt until the end of the first quarter of 2020, so the plan did not include any measures to address related economic challenges. As a result, a new objective was added to the plan, which aimed to balance the state budget in light of historic challenges and included steps to account for the financial impact of the pandemic while still achieving the outlined goals within the envisioned timeline.3

Despite having a plan, the government was not able to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on the economy. The impacts infiltrated the economy and drained liquidity from the private sector, lowered the morale of the public sector, and eliminated jobs for locals. The government suspended privileges of senior state officials, retired 70 percent of its tenured employees, abolished or merged several councils and ministries, and revised government contracts. Such measures, which put government spending on a strict diet, negatively affected the flow of capital to a government-driven economy and played out in the private sector. The effects were seen most at the small and medium enterprise level because of several shutdowns as well as the suspension or cancellation of government projects.

Thus, the government’s attempts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic actually exacerbated the economic situation, making clear that the government needed to find a way to balance competing priorities and needs. On one hand, the government must continue to reduce government spending and boost revenues if it wants to meet the goals set forth in the fiscal plan as well as Oman Vision 2040. On the other hand, it needs to strengthen and broaden the social security system to mitigate a higher unemployment rate as well as the effects on the population of the gradual lifting of subsidies for electricity and water and the introduction of a value-added tax (VAT) that came into effect this year.

In an attempt to address continued economic decline, a new economic stimulus plan was announced in March 2021. The plan enabled the government to grant tax exemptions, banking facilities, and preferential measures to large investors in the sectors targeted for economic diversification in the current five-year plan.

Despite the attempt to stimulate economic growth, challenges related to employment still remain. Government promises of employment, vocational training, and work opportunities have clearly done little to help, as official data show continued high unemployment, an indicator of an economic slowdown.4 As the government aims to streamline the administrative structure, the number of Omanis in the public sector is declining. The civil unrest in May 2021 resulted in royal orders to increase job opportunities in the public and private sectors. However, it seems that the government only intends to replace essential public sector employees while relying on the private sector to create most jobs.

Not only will these changes take time to produce positive results, but the transformation of Oman’s economy will not be complete until the relationship among the government, the private sector, and civil society is rebalanced. The current relationship is not conducive to propelling Oman’s economy to the envisioned success. Facing a dire need for more private sector investment and employment, the government is under pressure to better its relationship with the private sector and provide incentives for collaboration. The private sector is expecting the government to put a leash on the growing number of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) that were established over the past decade. Additionally, the private sector is demanding that its input be reflected in the government’s decisions and not merely used for show in a superficial demonstration of partnership. This happened in 2016 when the government launched an economic diversification scheme (Tanfeedh) with hundreds of private sector representatives. Participants’ optimism faded quickly, however, as most of what was agreed on has yet to be implemented.

On the civil society level, citizens have yet to feel that they are a part of the decision-making process. As the government moves to enact more legislation that directly affects citizens, the public’s demands to be more engaged in the policy process have increased. Representation of citizens’ demands is crucial to achieving Oman’s economic goals because of the significant role citizens play in revenue generation for the economy. Additionally, not only will citizens’ participation help strengthen the middle class, but it will also increase its trust of the government.

The new Sultan has acknowledged the need to rebalance the relationship among the government, private sector, and civil society by presenting new expectations for a symbiotic working relationship that is based on each side playing its part. If Oman is to improve its economic situation and meet the goals of Oman Vision 2040, distrust among the three parties cannot continue as it has over the last few decades and each party must meet its outlined expectations. Only time will tell if these newly remodeled partnerships will last and bring about the change needed.


Fatma al-Arimi is an Omani journalist and the managing director at The Media Centre (TMC).

NOTES

1 The work on Vision 2040 draft was supervised by Haitham Bin Tariq since 2013, years before becoming the Sultan. In December 2020, Haitham, as a Sultan, approved the vision.

2 Arabic source: Nasser al-Jashmi, the sec-gen of Oman's Ministry of Finance, in an interview to the state TV

3 These challenges were accumulated in the past. The financial challenges were there in 2011, became clearer in 2015, and the government started addressing them by initiating Tanfeedh in 2016 and Tawazon in 2019.

4 According to the monthly statistical bulletins issued by the National Center for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the rate of job-seekers increased from 2.1% in May 2020 to 4.9% in May 2021. The number of job security grant recipients doubled between November 2020 and March 2021.


Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.