Economy added 97,000 payroll jobs in February

Reuters

The U.S. economy added a modest 97,000 jobs in February, the smallest gain in two years, but job growth in prior months was stronger than first thought and the unemployment rate dropped, the government said on Friday, easing fears over economic weakness.

Also, the unemployment rate edged down to 4.5 percent from 4.6 percent, helping allay mounting concern that softening was spreading beyond the struggling manufacturing and housing sectors.

Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting the economy to add 100,000 jobs outside of the farming sector in February and for the jobless rate to hold steady at 4.6 percent.

Construction employment fell 62,000 in February, probably prompted by cold and stormy weather in much of the country, the government said.

Manufacturing employment shed 14,000 positions.

Average hourly earnings rose by 6 cents, or 0.4 percent, in February.

A separate report from the Commerce Department showed a narrowing of the trade gap after it set an annual record for the fifth straight year in 2006.

Health care, which accounted for one in six jobs added to U.S. payrolls in the last 12 months, added 33,000 jobs in February, the government said.

Technology Helps Unburden Medical Work Loads

Future Telecommuting Positions For College Grads

You don’t have to wait twenty or even ten years to be eligible for telecommuting work. If you want to know some of the fields that allow telecommuting, look at the careers that are growing. The less a company is able to fill a job vacancy the more a company may consider tele-working for an employee. The company may negotiate the position into a freelance position but the freedom to work at home can offer bonuses that Traditional on location jobs can not.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004-2014 Job Outlook for College Graduates numerous occupations with significant future openings will include telecommuting.

For more information on what jobs have the best telecommuting chances go to the article source

Fair Labor Standards Act

What is the Fair Labor Standards Act

The Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") of 1938 is federal legislation of the United States. The FLSA established a national minimum wage, guaranteed time and a half for overtime, and prohibited most employment of minors. The law originally contained a large number of special industry exemptions, many of which were designed to protect traditional pay practices in small, rural businesses.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, also known as FLSA provides for minimum standards for both wages and overtime entitlement and creates administrative procedures by which covered work time must be compensated.

Included in the Act are provisions related to child labor, equal pay, and portal-to-portal activities. In addition, the Act exempts specified employees or groups of employees from the application of certain of its provisions.

The Fair Labor Standards Act began applying to employees of the United States Federal Government in 1974. The Act is applied to any person employed by the Government of the United States.

Employee Rights For Teenagers

What is OSHA?

Employee Rights (summary / Easy to understand guide)

What is The Whistleblower Program?

Shhhh, Hey, You Want To Form A Union?

Unions and everything involved with unions have become so complex that you may wonder if they’re related to the IRS department. What I thought would be a simple informative article on What is A Union, has turned up a metropolitan city sized dump yard full of blogs, commentaries and articles both for and against unionization.

So what is a union?

A union is an organized group of workers who come together to make decisions about the conditions of their work as one group. Through union membership, workers can influence wages, work hours, benefits, workplace health and safety, and other work-related issues for they’re workers.

Many of the benefits and protections workers enjoy today came about as a result of union efforts. These include the minimum wage, social security payments, an eight hour day and weekends, overtime pay, the American with Disabilities Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act which requires employers to meet safety standards for their workers. Under U.S. law, workers of all ages have the right to join a union. Having support from the union to ensure fair treatment in the workplace is one of the key reasons people join.

However, somewhere within the last several years unionization has been a dynamite issue. The pros being a blow torch and the cons a being the dynamite, both sides have their devils.

The union claim is that employers are engaging in rampant unfair labor practices to prevent employees from exercising their right to organize. On the other hand, data from the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, show no rise in such activities.

Employers have used humiliation, intimidation and bribes to discontinue forming a union. After a failed attempt to unionize, employees are than fired. So who is right and who’s wrong? Both actually.

Union membership in the US has been dropping and each side is shouting intimidation tactics. Unless your ear lays heavily into the discussion, it’s easy to get lost in all the hot polluted air.

I’m definitely not an export on Labor Relations & Unionization and this is just a summary of what is what. I researched the information from the viewpoint of someone who has no clue what a union is, what all the fuss is about and in all truth, that’s pretty accurate. As I researched the abundance of political information available online, I felt lost in the question “who’s telling the truth” and “Do I really need a union?” Each side presents a valid and very convincing argument.

At Holy Coast blog Rick Moore writes

“The reason for this [union membership] decline isn't illegal management meddling in organizing efforts. The problem is that unions haven't been able to persuade the workers themselves.”

However at Robert Reich's Blog he writes

“You’d think that more than seventy years after the right to form a union was enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act, workers could have a union if a majority wanted one.

Think again. Under current law, a majority vote isn’t nearly enough. Even if one hundred percent of workers want a union, employers can still stop them by demanding that the simple vote be followed by a complex process ending in a secret ballot – a process so long and drawn out that some employers use the time to fire union organizers and threaten others. End of story.”

Union membership has continued to fall since 1950. Back than roughly a third of American workers were unionized. Today’s numbers show that below 10 percent of employees is union members. Here is where the political dark clouds start floating in.

The Employee Free Choice Act, strive to reverse the declining trend by making it easier for unions to gain certification and reinforcing stronger penalties for employers who interfere with a unionization campaign. Union supports argue that without union representation, employees will not have the bargaining power needed to get their fair share of employee wages and benefits.

The House of Representatives voted to approve legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize workers. This means that the secret-ballot election has been removed from the unionization process. Supporters claim this helps forming unions easier. Those against it argued that it is a betrayal of workers’ right to a secret-ballot election and encourages Pro union to intimidation of workers into becoming unionized when in fact they have no wish to.

A report compiled by American Rights at Work found that several employer anti-union actions such as hiring alleged "union busting" law firms and consultants, threatening and firing union supporters and bribing workers against unionization.

Conversely, card-check elections are a hot debate. In a card check election unions gain recognition on the basis of signed union member cards rather than by a secret ballot election. i.e. potential members must sign the card-check in front of union leaders.

I could go and on presenting information from both sides that prove and disprove arguments for and against unions. After so much research, I don’t know whether I am for or against unions. The internet has yet again provided information overload. In the end, whether you are for or against unions is a personal choice based on who you believe.

Ideas Rule The World

Cisco Systems + Tribe + Five Across = ?

Where is Cisco Systems heading? Cisco Systems known for networking equipment for telecommunications providers and other big companies has purchased Tribe.net which is a social networking site that has continued to lose users to My Space and Face Book.

The Tribe purchase in addition to they’re Five Across (provider of social networking /community technology) purchase will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling My Space or You Tube in order to bring their customers together online. If in fact that is the direction Cisco is heading, that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies are thinking about social networks.

Everyday I read how social networks continue to push into the future and soon sites like My Space will be as ubiquitous as regular Web sites. Social networking attracts masses of people in one space and advertisers are salivating over how to best reach them. With new websites and technology advances, the Social Network players are aiming to create tools to let consumers, large companies and even presidential candidates create social web sites tailored for their own customers, friends, fans and employees.

Ning, is the latest venture of the Netscape co-creator Marc Andreessen. After a limited introduction last year, Marc Andreessen reintroduced Ning to users. “The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket,” said Mr. Andreessen. “They are restrictive about what you can and can’t do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online.”

Ning users who are creating communities can pay $20 a month to have a community free of advertisements (delivered by Google). In addition, users can also have the option of delivering their own advertising on Ning.

Soon, everybody will just do it.

Nike has taken they’re Just Do It motto online by creating they’re own social networking site called Joga for soccer fans. A Seattle-based start-up, recently began a service called Shelfari to let book lovers share their favorite books and opinions. Last month, Senator Barack Obama unveiled the social network site My.BarackObama.com for his presidential campaign.

Brand social networking isn’t a simple 1 2 3. The challenge is getting users to join new social networks when there are few other members. With so many new social networks popping up like wild mushrooms, the next challenge is persuading users to enter all of they’re online personality information into a new online community.

Firms are quickly trying to solve the problem by encouraging a standard tool called Open ID, which would let users sign on and easily transfer profile information among social sites.

Cisco now has a subdivision called Media Solutions Group that has handled previous consumer related purchases of the wireless router company Linksys and the cable box maker Scientific Atlanta. With the purchase of Tribe.net & Five Across, Cisco Systems is trying to further its goal to become a consumer-oriented company.

Dan Scheinman, the mergers and acquisition chief who led the Linksys and Scientific Atlanta purchases, runs the division at Cisco, which has been responsible for the deals for Five Across and Tribe.net. Mr. Scheinman said in an interview that Americans were quickly changing their media consumption habits. He said his new group would let Cisco help its media customers, like TV networks and cable companies, develop their sites and move more of their content onto the Web.

“Part of our job is to form a relationship with media companies and deliver technologies and services to them, so consumers can consume what they want online,” he said.

Where is Cisco Systems heading? The dominant player in the networking equipment market place, continues to throw considerable weight into the consumer related industries. Cisco's strategy has been to provide consumers with "anywhere, anytime" and they have aggressively been pursuing just that. Consumers have a variety options when it comes to internet and media usage and it looks as if Cisco may be included in almost all of them.

Careers in Technology