Tuesday, February 5th, 2019
STEPHANIE GRIFFITH, - Think Progress
Stephan: The Republican Party does not care for the citizens of America unless they are rich. If you are a working person, an hourly wage earner, you have to be a dim bulb indeed to vote Republican. Why do I say that? Here's yet another story that proves the accuracy of what I am saying.
Caution sign in view as man mops floor of retail outlet. Janitorial services. Caretaker.
Darshea Browne finally returned to patrolling the halls of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum last week, after the federal shutdown forced her and her fellow security guards off the job in December.
Browne, who lives in Washington, D.C., lost five weeks’ wages — nearly 10 percent of her annual income — and has no idea if she’ll ever see that money.
She knows that unlike other federal government employees, as a contract worker, there is no guarantee that she will be compensated for her lost pay.
“I lost about $1,500 to $2,000” in wages, Browne, 22, told ThinkProgress. “I would like to get my back pay, because I’m a hard worker just like any other federal worker.”
As of Friday, 40 Senate Democrats and 50 Democrats in the House had endorsed legislation that would give back pay to federal contract workers. So far, the bill has the backing of just one lone GOP lawmaker, Sen, Susan Collins (R-ME).
“I’m hopeful and I’m optimistic” […]
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Monday, February 4th, 2019
Stephan: In the midst of everything else this is what is coming and, with it, we will see a fundamental change in employment. Unfortunately, because we are not planning for it, are not thinking about the millions whose jobs will disappear, and what will happen to them, it is all going to be very painful.
My prediction is that since no real planning is being done that non-college educated White Christian men, who already feel fearful, and confused, which is why they support Trump, will feel further threatened, and the schism in American society will only grow worse. And since we are now a kleptocratic oligarchy not a democracy massive social unrest is sure to follow.
Robots move products around an Amazon warehouse.
Credit: Giulio Napolitano/Getty
There’s no doubt technology is shaking up the American workplace. Amazon employs more than 100,000 robots in its US warehouses, alongside more than 125,000 human workers. Sears and Brookstone, icons of brick and mortar retailing, are both bankrupt. But as machines and software get ever smarter, how many more workers will they displace, and which ones?
Economists who study employment have pushed backagainst recent predictions by Silicon Valley soothsayers like Elon Musk of an imminent tidal wave of algorithmic unemployment. The evidence indicates US workers will instead be lapped by the gentler swells of a gradual revolution, in which jobs are transformed piecemeal as machines grow more capable. Now a new study predicts that young, Hispanic, and black workers will be most affected by that creeping disruption. Men will suffer more changes to their work than women.
The analysis, from the Brookings Institution, suggests that just as the dividends of recent economic growth have been distributed unevenly, so too will the […]
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Everything that could go wrong with Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union seems to have done so. With only 59 days to go until the U.K. automatically crashes out of the bloc, British lawmakers still haven’t approved a deal with EU leaders that would avoid a cataclysmic rupture. The odds are not good. The House of Commons decisively rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposal earlier this month, handing her the biggest parliamentary defeat for a British government in the country’s history. Members will vote on Tuesday on amendments to May’s “Plan B” legislation that could avoid, or guarantee, a no-deal Brexit.
