Half of working women in Wisconsin are thinking about quitting, a new survey says

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Thu, December 9, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted life for almost two years, has altered how people think about work and caused an economic downturn that disproportionately affected women. Now, half of working women in Wisconsin are thinking about quitting their jobs, according to a new survey.

"This points to a crisis that companies need to think about — half of the female employees in Wisconsin are considering quitting," said Kimberly Kane, president and CEO of Kane Communications Group. "This is not a problem to throw money at. This is a values issue."

There appears to be a sense that the women in the survey did not feel that their employer cared about them. About 25% of the women in the survey said they did not think that their employer cared about their mental health. Women who are mothers, in particular, indicated that they have difficulty balancing work and home life. The vast majority of women in the survey — 81% — said their job does not offer child care support. Nearly 70% of women in the survey said they have recently experienced some, very or extreme levels of stress.

A LIVING WAGE IS $20 PR HR
California could get an $18 minimum wage. Experts outline how it could get rid of worker shortages and cause a 'ripple effect' throughout the country.


Juliana Kaplan
Sat, December 11, 2021





Joe Sanberg, a progressive activist and entrepreneur, filed the ballot initiative


Activists are fighting for an $18 minimum wage in California — more than double the federal rate.


The boost may help get those fed up with pay declines relative to economic growth to return to work.


Five million workers may get an extra $24 a day with the hike, says the man who introduced the plan.

Worker advocates in California — a state that's seen price spikes in everything from housing to water — are looking to raise the state's minimum wage to more than double the federal rate.

The country's federal minimum wage remains at $7.25, but a new ballot initiative would bring California's to $18 an hour. The experts behind it say the Living Wage Act of 2022 would be a boon for about 5 million workers after decades of declining wages relative to economic growth.

Joe Sanberg, the activist and entrepreneur who filed the proposal, said those workers would get an extra $24 a day under an $18 minimum wage — and it may also help ease the worker shortages that employers complain about.


"That's a big deal," Sanberg said. "That's going to be the difference between people being able to make their rent or not, providing healthy food for their kids — three meals instead of two meals a day."

This aligns with the views of some activists, such as Saru Jayaraman — the president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley — who said the economy isn't suffering from a "labor shortage," but rather a "wage shortage." In industries such as leisure and hospitality, workers are quitting en masse, with many saying they won't return.

"The real solution to getting these workers to come back to work, and having the restaurant industry we had prior to the pandemic, is going to be getting people a permanent wage increase," Jayaraman said. She added that 2 million restaurant workers — who are overwhelmingly immigrants, people of color, women, and single mothers — would benefit from a minimum-wage hike.

Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley.

Heidi Shierholz, the president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, agreed that higher wages are a solution for so-called labor shortages.

It can't just happen at individual businesses, Jayaraman said. Workers "aren't dumb" and won't return for a restaurant raising wages on its own, since it could also reduce wages at its discretion.

"Workers aren't going to come back for anything less than a guarantee of a permanent wage increase," Jayaraman said. "And that's what this ballot measure provides."

Now, the ballot measure must get a million signatures to get on the November 2022 ballot, The Sacramento Bee reported.

"So many people are working full time and can't afford life's basic needs, and are living on a knife's edge of financial ruin," Sanberg said. "In California, where the cost of living is continuing to increase — the cost of everything is continuing to increase — those increases fall hardest on the shoulders of low-income people."
America's federal minimum is stagnant, while prices keep rising

For 12 years, America's federal minimum wage has been $7.25 — even as essentials, such as food, gas, and housing, see prices skyrocket. In October, the US experienced the highest rate of price inflation in three decades.

In the meantime, over half of the states in the country have enacted their own raises. A record-breaking number of jurisdictions raised their wages in 2021, a report from the National Employment Law Project said. California is set to raise its minimum wage to $15 for all employers by 2023.

But even with momentum that includes the president supporting $15 as a new minimum-wage benchmark, congressional Democrats still failed to move the minimum wage forward as part of President Joe Biden's first stimulus package.

Sanberg saw California as a leader in the movement and thought the ballot initiative would pass, which could have wider-reaching implications.

"I hope and expect that it's going to create a positive ripple effect throughout the country, where other states are going to follow suit and raise their minimum wage," Sanberg said. "Eventually, the federal government's going to raise its minimum wage, but the stakes are too high to wait for the federal government to act."

Under the Living Wage Act of 2022, the minimum in California would rise to $18 by 2026 and then be automatically tied to inflation.

"What California is doing, believe it or not, with this ballot measure, it's so far from radical," Jayaraman said. "It's actually way below where we would have gotten had wages gone up with inflation or productivity growth."

Dean Baker, a senior economist at the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research, found that the minimum wage would be $26 today if it had kept up with productivity growth.

Rather, Jayaraman said, it's "radical" to keep the wage stagnant for so long: "When you don't raise it, the impact is massive amounts of poverty and usage of public assistance, and frankly, a failed economy. That is what we are. We're a failed economy."

Activision Blizzard Workers Take First Steps Toward Unionizing

Jason Schreier
Fri, December 10, 2021,

(Bloomberg) -- Some employees at Activision Blizzard Inc. are taking the initial, early steps toward organizing in an industry that isn’t unionized.

In collaboration with the media labor union, Communications Workers of America, employees of the U.S.’s second-largest video game publisher are asking colleagues to sign a union authorization card, which could eventually lead to a vote across the company. Their efforts coincide with the creation of a strike fund to support hundreds of workers who have been participating in a work stoppage since Monday in protest of layoffs at one of Activision Blizzard’s studios.

Workers at Santa Monica, California-based Activision, known for games like Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, have staged three protests since July, after a California agency sued the company over allegations of sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Issues have snowballed since then, including an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and a class-action shareholder lawsuit. Employees and the Communications Workers of America also filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the company.

Organization around the protests and a call for a strike is being initiated by the ABK Workers Alliance, which represents the employees from the company’s largest studios, Activision, Blizzard and King. The Washington Post earlier reported on the unionization efforts.

A spokesperson for ABK said the group had already gathered several hundred signatures before this move, as it has been working with the CWA and the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees for months. If the group can collect union cards from 30% of workers in any of Activision Blizzard’s business units, it will be able to call for votes within those units, the spokesperson said.

Activision workers’ biggest concern right now is having a voice in what’s happening at the company, the spokesperson said, adding that workers have been “ignored and swept aside” for months.

In an email to employees, Activision said it supports workers’ legal right to decide whether to join a union. “We ask only that you take time to consider the consequences of your signature on the binding legal document presented to you by CWA,” Activision said. “Achieving our workplace culture aspirations will best occur through active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act upon quickly.”

Organizers slam Activision Blizzard for “union busting”


Megan Farokhmanesh
Fri, December 10, 2021

Activision Blizzard is asking employees to “take time to consider the consequences” of workers’ recent efforts to unionize, a tactic some organizers are calling "union busting."

Driving the news: Chief administrative officer Brian Bulatao sent an internal email on Friday, claiming that employees signing union cards “will have signed over to [the Communications Workers of America] the exclusive right to ‘represent [you]’...that means your ability to negotiate all your own working conditions will be turned over to CWA.”

“Achieving our workplace culture aspirations will best occur through active, transparent dialogue between leaders and employees that we can act upon quickly,” Bulatao continues.

A Better ABK organizer Jessica Gonzalez told Axios that the company’s “incompetence has been showing and continues to show with this obvious union busting intimidation tactic.”

Why it matters: Activision Blizzard’s message is a direct response to employees’ continued efforts to unionize.

Catch up quick: Employees at Call of Duty: Warzone developer Raven Software walked out earlier this week after a dozen quality assurance contractors were told their contracts would not be renewed.

Those employees have not yet returned to work and have instead entered strike territory.

One organizer estimates at least 200 people have walked out over Tuesday and Wednesday alone.

Organizers have also begun collecting union authorization cards as they work to gather the support needed to form a union.

An Activision Blizzard spokesperson told Axios that it “supports our employees’ right to express their opinions in a legal, safe, and peaceful manner, without fear of retaliation, and their NLRA rights in general.”

The other side: “It's disappointing to see Activision Blizzard management, at yet another choice point when they could have done the right thing, double down and continue to take the low road,” said CWA National Organizing Director Tom Smith in a statement to Axios.

“Union avoidance campaigns waste resources that ABK management could otherwise be using to address the serious concerns at the company such as compensating the victims of sexual harassment and discrimination.”

The big picture: Organizers say leadership rarely, if ever, acknowledges their efforts and asks.

“The fact that we're being so routinely ignored, just really speaks to the fact that our leadership doesn't care,” an organizer told Axios. “The only way to make them care is to put public pressure on them — to make them see that caring is profitable.”

“We are turning so many great people out of our companies and so many great people out of the industry with these culture issues. That stuff has a huge impact on our ability to make games.”

Two organizers at A Better ABK told Axios that Activision Blizzard would no longer compensate workers who walked out past Dec. 8.

Organizers announced a strike fund Thursday to support workers in their walkout that’s already raised more $241,000.

“We didn't want to jump straight to unionization,” an organizer told Axios, noting leadership’s lack of action as a driving force.

“We had other tools in our kit that we tried leveraging, using walkouts petitions, raising our voices internally.”

“The fact that this has gone on for so long, we really did feel the need to make sure that people were secure, especially because... we can't intermittently strike.”

A Better ABK continues to gather the necessary 30 percent support to hold an election to unionize in the wake of leadership’s unwillingness to work with them.

An organizer tells Axios that the timing of these events were coincidental to Thursday's annual show, The Game Awards.

They credit management’s lack of acknowledgment of A Better ABK’s requests, on top of the Raven walkouts, with the decision to pursue that path.

“It was felt by several people that the time was right,” they said.

“We've been getting slammed,” they added of the response to signing unions cards so far. “The service has gone down once or twice... because so many people were trying to sign up.”

Activision Blizzard Devs Announce Work Stoppage And Strike Fund

Ethan Gach
Thu, December 9, 2021

People gather outside Blizzard headquarters in Irvine, California to protest conditions at its parent company.

Employees at publishing giant Activision Blizzard, who formed the ABK Worker Alliance, have called on supporters today to donate to a strike fund. They have announced their intention to stop working, in protest of their management’s ongoing response to months of lawsuits and reports about widespread sexual harassment and discrimination across the company.

“Today, the ABK Worker’s Alliance announces the initiation of its strike,” the group wrote on Twitter. “We encourage our peers in the Game Industry to stand with us in creating lasting change.” The ABK Worker Alliance also linked to a strike fund set up on GoFundMe, where it calls on supporters to help it raise $1 million to take care of employees during the stoppage.

In the months since, we’ve seen CEO Bobby Kotick and the Board of Directors protect abusers and only hold perpetrators accountable after the events were brought to light by outside media. We’ve seen Activision hire law firm WilmerHale, known for union busting, to disrupt and impede the improvement efforts of Activision-Blizzard workers. We’ve seen Raven Software workers lured by the promise of promotion, only to be terminated shortly after relocation on top of the already underappreciated and severely underpaid working conditions of ABK workers across the company. These, and many other events have caused an alliance of Activision-Blizzard employees to initiate a work stoppage until demands are met and worker representation is finally given a place within the company.

The Washington Post’s Shannon Liao reports that the ABK Worker Alliance will also be calling on employees across Activision Blizzard to sign union authorization cards in a new massive step toward unionization.

These latest labor actions comes as quality assurance testers at Raven Software, the studio in charge of Call of Duty: Warzone, walked off the job earlier this week to protest recently announced layoffs. While 500 contractors across Activision Blizzard would be converted to full-time, the company said 20 would be terminated near the end of January, a move Raven developers said would hurt Warzone’s ongoing development and maintenance.

It’s currently unclear how many will be involved in the larger work stoppage ABK Worker’s Alliance announced today. Last month, over 1,500 employees at the roughly 10,000 person company signed the letter calling on Kotick to resign.

Activision Blizzard and ABK Worker’s Alliance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shareholder objects to Activision CEO Kotick's renomination to Coca-Cola board


Bobby Kotick, chief executive officer of Activision Blizzard, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho

Thu, December 9, 2021, 9:51 AM·1 min read

(Reuters) -A Coca-Cola Co shareholder asked the beverage giant on Thursday to not renominate Activision Blizzard Inc's Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick to its board, as the video game company deals with lawsuits on workplace harassment.

Allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination at Activision earlier this year led to more than 20 employees being fired and 20 more individuals facing other forms of disciplinary action.

SOC Investment Group, which is also an adviser to pension funds, said Kotick bears "primary responsibility for the longstanding 'frat boy' corporate culture" that has put Activision under pressure and brought in lawsuits.


"The time and attention that Kotick will need to devote to the cultural crisis at Activision ought to preclude his ability to effectively serve as a director of a major global brand," SOC said.

Coca-Cola did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Activision declined to comment.

SOC said it would also oppose Kotick and Coca-Cola's lead independent director Maria Elena Lagomasino's re-election, if Kotick was nominated.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)

A woman who lives in Amsterdam's Red Light District says it's the 'most fun' area, but she wishes tourists would be more respectful to sex workers


Mikhaila Friel
Fri, December 10, 2021

Amsterdam's Red Light District.Robin Utrecht/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images


A resident of Amsterdam's Red Light District spoke to Insider about what it's like to live there.


Yung Carmiggelt said she wants visitors to be "respectful with the sex workers."


"If they want to pay for it and a woman can make money from it, then why not?" she said.

Amsterdam's Red Light District (RLD) has countless strip clubs, coffee shops, and around 300 windows belonging to sex workers, according to Amsterdam.Info, making it a prime location for tourists.

Yung Carmiggelt is one of around 4,000 residents of the RLD — and yet, she says many visitors are unaware that people live in the popular neighborhood.

"We don't want to become like Venice," she tells me during my visit to Amsterdam in October.


She sits across from me in the "We Live Here" information center, an exhibition she volunteers at that showcases the neighborhood as a residential area with the aim of promoting respectful behavior from visitors. According to the We Live Here website, tourists "modify their behavior if they are actively informed" of this.

Yung Carmiggelt sits outside the "We Live Here" exhibition in the RLD.Mikhaila Friel/Insider

The exhibition was commissioned by the city council and has photos of some of the residents, alongside printed interviews where they explain why they enjoy living in the area.

For Carmiggelt, who has lived there for 23 years, the answer is simple: it's "the most fun area," she said. This was especially the case during the COVID-19 pandemic, which she said prompted her to spend more time with her neighbors than she usually would.

Carmiggelt said she had been able to build good relationships with the local shopkeepers, the butcher, and the women who work in the windows, "who don't talk about their work" with the residents.

Free postcards from the "We Live Here" exhibition.Mikhaila Friel/Insider

The RLD hasn't always been a tourist area, according to Carmiggelt. She said that when she first arrived 23 years ago, the area was considered dangerous as it was known as a hot-spot for drug dealers and knife crime.

"Now there are lots of police cameras, and lots of police on the street," she said. "The streets are cleaned every day for the tourists, and there are a lot of nice trendy shops so it started to get popular and everyone wanted to have a business around here."

While Carmiggelt said she likes living in an area that has frequent visitors, there are two things she wishes tourists would understand.

"Your garbage, please throw it in the trash, not on the street," she said. "And be respectful with the sex workers."

"It's the oldest profession, and men and women want to have sex. And if they want to pay for it and a woman can make money from it, then why not, if it's from free will?" Carmiggelt added later in the interview.

There are several rules in place to protect the privacy and safety of sex workers in the RLD. For example, visitors are prohibited from taking photographs of the women who work in the windows, and drinking on the streets is now allowed, according to RLD Amsterdam tours.

Walking tours in areas with windows brothels were banned by the city council in April 2020, The Independent reported.

Tourists had recently returned to the city at the time of our interview in October, with fully vaccinated travelers from the UK being able to visit the Netherlands without quarantining. At the time of writing, travelers from non-EU countries are currently banned from visiting EU countries, including the Netherlands, due to the spread of the new South African variant of COVID-19.

The Dutch government previously implemented a three-week lockdown from November 13 due to a rise of COVID-19 cases, The Guardian reported.

Shell walks 'tightrope' of demands amid climate pressures


FILE - The logo for Royal Dutch Shell appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, on Dec. 1, 2021. Royal Dutch Shell investors are expected to change the company’s name and share structure on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021, as the oil giant struggles to prove its green credentials amid criticism from all sides that it has been slow to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

 (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)More

DANICA KIRKA
Fri, December 10, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell investors are expected to change the company’s name Friday and approve moving its headquarters from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom as the oil giant faces criticism it has been slow to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Shell says the changes will accelerate payouts to shareholders and help the company shift its focus to renewable energy. Shareholders met Friday to vote on the plan, including a simplified corporate structure that will give the Anglo-Dutch firm a single class of shares and unify its headquarters in London.

The move illustrates the challenges oil companies face as they pivot from a business model that has generated huge profits and reliable dividend payments for shareholders toward a more uncertain future tied to wind, solar and biofuels. With returns from the new ventures still unknown, investors are demanding quick returns from existing assets, said David Elmes, an energy expert at the U.K.’s Warwick Business School.


“They’re walking a very difficult tightrope of keeping shareholders happy with the level of dividend and buybacks today versus getting permission from shareholders to switch investment from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy,” Elmes said. “And it seems to be at the moment, that they’re still having to pay an awful lot to shareholders today to get their support for the transition.”

Until now, Shell has had two separate classes of shares, one for its Dutch arm and one for its U.K. arm, which together comprise Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The structure is a legacy of the company’s creation in 1907, when a British import-export business that once traded in exotic shells merged with Royal Dutch to create what ultimately became one of the world’s biggest oil companies.

In addition to creating a single class of shares, the company plans to drop Royal Dutch from its name.

Shell says its new corporate structure will allow it to accelerate share buybacks. The company has already promised to return $7 billion to shareholders as it completed the sale of assets in Texas and New Mexico to ConocoPhillips this year.

At least one investor is calling for Shell to go further and split into two companies, one focused on legacy oil and gas operations and another on renewable energy. Third Point LLC, a New York hedge fund, said in October that the move would allow both companies to run more efficiently, returning more money to shareholders and accelerating progress on climate change.

Breaking up Shell would make it easier to respond to the competing demands that are pulling management in different directions, Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb said in a letter to investors.

Shell's stock price has risen 16% in the past 12 months, lagging behind the 31% gain in Chevron shares and the 46% jump for ExxonMobil.

“You can't be all things to all people,” Loeb said. “In trying to do so, Shell has ended up with unhappy shareholders who have been starved of returns and an unhappy society that wants to see Shell do more to decarbonize."

Shell has said it has had preliminary conversations with Third Point and would continue to do so, but it's resisting a breakup because it wants its fossil fuel businesses to fund the transition.

Other European energy companies have opted to spin off their renewable businesses. In October, Rome-based Eni said it was planning an initial public offering of that business. Spain’s Repsol is reportedly considering a similar move for its low-carbon assets.

The pressure for oil companies to shift away from fossil fuels has increased rapidly since the 2015 Paris climate agreement set a goal of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden has made it clear that he wants the company to remain competitive in a world that gets more of its energy from renewable sources. The company last year set a target for achieving net-zero carbon emissions from both its operations and the products it sells by 2050.

To achieve this goal, Shell says it plans to expand its electricity business, invest in renewable energy and build more charging stations for electric vehicles. It's also investing in carbon capture and storage and “nature-based solutions” such as restoring forests and wetlands to offset carbon emissions.

“At a time of unprecedented change for the industry, it is even more important that we have an increased ability to accelerate the transition to a lower carbon global energy system,’’ Chairman Andrew Mackenzie said in a video before the vote. “This simpler structure will cause Shell to accelerate the delivery of its powering progress strategy while creating value for shareholders, customers and wider society.’’

Shell’s net-zero pledge has done little to placate critics so far.

In May, the Hague District Court ordered Shell to cut carbon emissions 45% by 2030, saying the company's net-zero target “is not concrete, has many caveats and is based on monitoring social developments rather than the company’s own responsibility for achieving a CO2 reduction.”

Shell said it was appealing. The new shareholder structure will have no impact on the case, the company said.

Meanwhile, Follow This, an investor group that lobbies oil companies to move faster on climate change, supports Shell’s new structure and having it remain a single entity because it would allow management to focus on cutting carbon emissions, founder Mark van Baal said.

Remaining one company means Shell could use the cash flow from declining fossil fuel sales to invest in renewables, said van Baal, whose group includes 8,000 investors and holds less than 1% of Shell’s stock. Breaking up the company would benefit short-term investors at the expense of cutting emissions, he said.

Shell already is moving too cautiously, with one report suggesting its emissions may actually increase 4% by 2030, van Baal said. Long-term investors want change, fearing that floods, fires and other damage exacerbated by climate change are hurting the profits of other companies in their portfolios.

“Institutional investors are really losing their patience," van Baal said. “The whole world’s economy is at risk because of climate change."

‘Unhinged’ Better.com Boss Forced to Take Time Off as Employees Revolt


Noah Kirsch
Fri, December 10, 2021

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Linkedin

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is “taking time off effective immediately,” as employees revolt over a mass layoff he executed in brutal fashion at the start of the month.

In an email obtained by The Daily Beast, the company’s board of directors—which had previously granted Garg exceptionally wide latitude—announced that it will bring in a third party firm to conduct a “leadership and cultural assessment.” Vice first reported the news.

Better’s chief financial officer Kevin Ryan, who recently joined from Morgan Stanley, will manage day-to-day operations in the interim.

Fox News Host Cheers Better.com CEO’s Mass Zoom Firings: ‘I Love This So Much!’

“Employees are calling for a head,” a company source told The Daily Beast, arguing that Garg stepping down is a cosmetic fix more than a meaningful one. “It’s the entire leadership team. Vishal’s a large part of it, but there’s a lot more there,” the person said of Better’s fractured culture.

Ryan is an “unknown quantity,” to the rank-and-file, a current employee at the SoftBank-backed mortgage startup said. “We haven’t gotten a real look at his leadership style or personality yet.”

Still, the employee said, “Vishal being forced on leave is one of the best pieces of news to come from this fiasco and I’m hoping it’s announced he resigns soon.”

Ryan’s name was attached to a frosty statement the company sent out on Dec. 1 acknowledging the layoffs.

“A fortress balance sheet and a reduced and focused workforce together set us up to play offense going into a radically evolving homeownership market,” he said at the time.

Better later amended the statement to include acknowledgment that “having to conduct layoffs is gut wrenching, especially this time of year.”

Better.com Executives Flee After CEO’s Viral Self-Own

Reached via text message, Garg said he was “at the playground” with his children and that it was too loud to comment. He directed The Daily Beast to his media team, which did not immediately reply to emails.

Over the past two weeks, multiple high-ranking Better executives have fled the company, including the head of marketing, vice president of communications, and head of public relations.

More resignations are expected. “[The] company culture took a DEEP dive and everyone I’ve spoken to is looking to leave,” another current worker told The Daily Beast earlier this week.

The person was skeptical that Garg could be forced to resign for good: “My guess is after the media coverage dies down, nothing is going to change and he’s just going to go back to his unhinged sociopathic self.”

SoftBank-Backed Mortgage Startup Better.com Lays Off 900 Workers Just Before Holidays

The controversy began at the start of the month, when Garg hastily summoned 900 workers into a webinar; many assumed they would be meeting about a $750 million cash infusion Better had announced the day before.

Instead, Garg told the American workers affected that they were out of jobs. “Your employment is terminated effective immediately,” he said, while emphasizing how difficult it was for him to fire them. “The last time I [fired people], I cried. This time I hope to be stronger,” he added.

Garg later declared that many of the terminated staffers had been working two-hour days on average, likening them to thieves.

That message didn’t go over well internally, particularly since many high-performing employees had been laid off, multiple people familiar with the matter said.

Garg tried to win back his staff with an apology letter he emailed on Tuesday. “I realize that the way I communicated this news made a difficult situation worse,” he wrote. “I am deeply sorry and committed to learning from this.”

Many inside the company were skeptical of Garg’s sincerity.

One current worker said that members of the sales team were asked to distribute his apology note to clients, in an effort to dampen a customer revolt.

“It was 1000 percent a PR move, no actual apology,” the worker said.

Better.com CEO is taking time off ‘effective immediately’ after a week of scandals


Felicia Hou
Fri, December 10, 2021, 7:44 AM·1 min read

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is taking time off “effective immediately,” according to an email from the company’s board of directors obtained by Fortune.

The email, which was sent out on Friday morning, stated that CFO Kevin Ryan will take over day-to-day decisions for the company. A third-party firm will also be hired to perform a “leadership and cultural assessment,” which will be used to “build a long-term sustainable and positive culture.”

Here's the email:
Good Morning,
Vishal and the Board wanted to provide Better employees an update given the very regrettable events over the last week.

Vishal will be taking time off effective immediately. During this interim period Kevin Ryan as CFO will be managing the day-to-day decisions of the company and he will be reporting to the Board. As well, the Board has engaged an independent 3rd party firm to do a leadership and cultural assessment. The recommendations of this assessment will be taken into account to build a long-term sustainable and positive culture at Better. We have much work to do and we hope that everyone can refocus on our customers and support each other to continue to build a great company and a company we can be proud of.

Better Board of Directors

Better.com did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

The financial startup has landed in hot water recently after Garg abruptly laid off 900 workers via a Zoom call last week. The company has since delayed its plans for a SPAC merger. Fortune uncovered that Garg was also berating the productivity rates of employees on Blind, an anonymous online forum for professionals. He admitted to writing comments that said employees were “stealing” from customers after allegedly working two-hour days. On Tuesday, he sent out a companywide apology for his comments.

“I own the decision to do the layoffs, but in communicating it I blundered the execution,” Garg wrote in that email. “In doing so, I embarrassed you."

‘Lots of wage growth’ seen in low-wage work: economist

Thomas Hum
Fri., December 10, 2021

New jobless claims hit a new low not seen since 1969 last week totaling 184,000, suggesting that employers are looking to retain their workers amid the tight labor market. Amid this labor crunch, Macropolicy Perspectives Founder and President Julia Coronado believes the demand seen in the market may be causing wage growth for low-wage workers.

“So you've got Amazon (AMZN) competing with leisure and hospitality and retail, all for the same pool of workers, which, by the way, is a shrinking pool of workers, both because of more people getting higher education and because of reduced immigration. And new immigrants are more highly educated,” Coronado told Yahoo Finance Live. “This kind of pool of low-wage workers is actually shrinking — has been for years even before the pandemic. So now we've added on this intense demand surge, and we're seeing lots of wage growth there.”

However, Coronado said that the market remains strong, with workers rather than employers setting the tone for the recovery going forward.

“Elsewhere, the dynamics look very healthy — still a strong job market, still more of a worker's market than before the pandemic,” she added.

Coronado joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss factors contributing to the labor market recovery, highlighting competition between industries and demands for wage growth. Macropolicy Perspectives LLC is an economic research firm headquartered in New York City that provides perspectives on the U.S. and global economy to support decision makers in financial services and other industries.

Brookings defines “low wages” as two-thirds of the median hourly wage for full-time, full-year male workers, which equated to $16.67 per hour in 2018. This metric is then adjusted to account for variation in local cost of living for different areas of the country.

Indeed, the lowest-paid workers saw around an 8% increase in earnings according to Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And while 5.5% of this gain was negated by inflation, after adjusting for occupation and worker demographics, Dube found that those at the bottom third of the pay scale saw their earnings rise on average, while earnings have gone down for the top 70%.

According to Coronado, labor share of GDP has indicated that wage growth has been strong as of late, suggesting that workers are reaping the benefits of the labor demand surge. However, in regard to whether this may lead to a wage-price spiral, she believes it is still too early to tell.

In any case, Coronado expects pandemic conditions to continue to place a drag on the labor market.

“The pandemic has also [acted as] a headwind, a constraint on labor force participation,” Coronado said. “And we saw some good news on that front last month, but now we have omicron. So, you know, some people are just still on the sidelines, trying to navigate what that means for their families. And so there's just still a lot of friction and churn associated with this recovery.”

Thomas Hum is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @thomashumTV

Labour groups, opposition parties press Liberals to fix GIS clawback in fiscal update

Fri., December 10, 2021


OTTAWA — The federal Liberals are under increasing pressure to fix an issue in the pandemic safety net that has rolled back or cut off benefits to low-income seniors.

About 83,000 seniors lost a key income support this year because they received emergency aid last year, money that bumped their earnings above the threshold to qualify for the guaranteed income supplement.

Thousands more have seen a cut in GIS payments for similar reasons.

The Canadian Labour Congress is calling on the government to use next week's economic update to end the clawback.

Opposition MPs are also peppering the government with questions in the House of Commons over the issue, demanding the Liberals detail how and when they'll address it.

Seniors Minister Kamal Khera tells the Commons that the government is trying to find the best solution to help those affected.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2021.

U.K. to Probe Prosecutor Over Failures in Oil Bribery Case

Ellen Milligan
Fri., December 10, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s Attorney General will probe the country’s top fraud prosecutor after judges found serious failings in a major bribery investigation.

The government’s chief legal adviser is “deeply concerned” about a ruling published Friday, which criticized the Serious Fraud Office for its relations with a U.S. fixer and for not disclosing key documents. A London appeals court quashed one of the convictions in the Unaoil bribery case because of failings made by the prosecutor.

The Attorney General “will be discussing the implications with the director of the Serious Fraud Office urgently,” according to a statement. It “has today commissioned an independent review of the issues highlighted including disclosure failings at the Serious Fraud Office.”

A spokesperson for the prosecutor said it would fully cooperate with the review. This investigation supersedes a review the SFO had planned to conduct itself.

The probe places the spotlight on SFO director Lisa Osofsky. It also comes after a string of failings for the agency, including the collapse of its trial against two former Serco Group Plc directors due to disclosure errors.

In Friday’s ruling, judges described the prosecutor’s dealings with an unofficial fixer as “wholly inappropriate” and said its refusal to provide key documents in the case was a “serious failure” especially as “some of the documents had a clear potential to embarrass the SFO.” They also said they weren’t suggesting any SFO official “deliberately sought to cover anything up.”

Company fined after exposing Montana workers to arsenic


Fri., December 10, 2021

BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — A company that turned mining waste into roofing materials at a Montana plant was fined and ordered to conduct medical monitoring of workers on Friday, after pleading guilty to a criminal charge that it exposed employees to arsenic.

Tinley Park, Illinois-based U.S. Minerals was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen to pay a $393,200 fine and will be on probation for five years, according to court records. The company pleaded guilty in August to negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Air Act.

Prosecutors said U.S. Minerals continued to poison its workers by exposing them to arsenic despite repeated warnings from regulators. Long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can lead to skin cancer and cancer in the bladder and lungs, according to the World Health Organization.

In its guilty plea, the company acknowledged it “negligently placed another person in the imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.”

From 2013 to when it closed in June 2021 the company's Anaconda plant converted mining waste known as black slag — a byproduct of a century of copper smelting in the town — into roofing materials called Black Diamond Abrasive Products.

Under a plea agreement, U.S. Minerals plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Texas and Louisiana will be under increased oversight by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during a five-year probationary period.

The company would also have to monitor the health of former employees of the Anaconda plant during that time.

Employees who take advantage of the medical monitoring program would not give up the right to pursue civil litigation against U.S. Minerals, under the agreement.

Five of six employees tested at the Anaconda plant in July 2015 had elevated levels of arsenic, according to a 2016 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. At the time, respiratory protection was provided but not required, and there was no running water or handwashing stations at the plant

The company was earlier fined nearly $107,000 by OSHA for violations in 2016.

Montana’s health department ordered the plant to temporarily close in February 2019 after at least two workers had elevated arsenic levels in their urine in 2018.