David Perdue, Georgia's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, defended himself Sunday night against charges that he paid female managers less than male ones when he was CEO of Dollar General, saying "it was less than 2,000 people" who brought the lawsuit against the company.
"There was no wrongdoing there," Perdue said in a debate Sunday night against Democrat Michelle Nunn. "That lawsuit or that claim or that complaint was settled five years after I was there. She knows that. And it was less than 2,000 people. We had upwards of 70,000 employees at that company."
Nunn jumped on Perdue's statement. "You know, 2,000 women, that actually seems like quite a lot to me who say that they were discriminated against. And federal investigators -- public knowledge -- found that that was true. And it was during your tenure."
The lawsuit in question was brought against Dollar General in 2006, while Perdue was CEO. Almost 2,100 female store managers sued the company, claiming they had been discriminated against and "generally were paid less" than men with the same job title. Several years after Perdue left Dollar General, the company paid the employees a settlement of almost $19 million.
While Dollar General always claimed it had justifiable reasons for paying women less than men, an area director with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found the company’s explanation for the difference in pay was "not supported by the evidence nor is it sufficient to rebut the sex-based inference established by pay differentials."
Nunn's campaign and EMILY's List, a progressive women's PAC that supports Nunn, are both running ads against Perdue based on the pay discrimination suit. “If David Perdue didn’t do right by women at his company, why would he do right for Georgia?” the announcer asks in one ad.
The attack line may be working. The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows Nunn leading Perdue by 3 points overall, thanks to a huge advantage among women voters.
Perdue's campaign maintains that the candidate has always supported fair pay for women. “David absolutely believes in equal pay for equal work," Megan Whittemore, a spokeswoman for Perdue's campaign, told Time. "That is the law and he has always supported that. Unlike Michelle Nunn who will make it harder for women to succeed, David will be a strong voice for Georgia’s women and families in the U.S. Senate.”
Lululemon can't even donate to charity without miring itself in controversy.
The yoga-wear retailer is getting slammed after announcing a partnership this week with the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. Lululemon will contribute $750,000 to the Tibetan spiritual leader's nonprofit organization over the next three years to expand education initiatives and for "researching the connection between mind-body-heart," according to the company's press release.
Some critics say the alliance is hogwash. They don't think the Dalai Lama's name should be associated with a money-making enterprise and complain he's been "hijacked" and turned into a mere corporate marketing tool.
A mob flocked to Lululemon's official blog, lighting up the comments section with accusations of hypocrisy.
"As he believes that luxuries are not necessities, you believe in $100 yoga pants," one commenter pointed out.
"It is offensive that you have sunk so low as to use the Dalai Lama and his image as part of your branding," another wrote.
"I am put-off by Lululemon’s bizarre effort to hijack the Dalai Lama for brand-building and commercial gain," a third added.
A few who spoke out against the partnership claimed not to like the Dalai Lama, with one calling him "cruel" and another calling him "greedy."
Lululemon appears to disagree. "Both organizations share a common vision for developing the next generation of compassionate leaders in the world and are committed to engaging and empowering healthy communities," the company said in its press release.
Lululemon and the Dalai Lama Center did not respond to requests for additional comment.
Lululemon has a lot on its plate. Last spring, quality control issues sparked a recall of too-sheer yoga pants. Then, last fall, co-founder Chip Wilson irked many customers when he said Lululemon's pants "don't work" for some women's bodies. Earlier this month, Lululemon managed to offend the entire city of Buffalo, New York, by making fun of its NFL team.
One commenter summarized: "Dear Lulu, your product is still in question, don’t get me wrong. Great marketing, done! Now get back to improving your product and winning clients back."
First records died, then cassette tapes, then CDs and now, downloads. That's right, we're all but officially in the age of streaming services.
Apple might operate the largest online music store in the world, but the Apple Store's iTunes digital music sales have fallen about 13 percent this year, a source familiar with the matter tells the Wall Street Journal. The writing is on the wall.
Meanwhile, Spotify is surging ahead. The music streaming service hit 10 million global paid subscribers in May, up from 6 million paid subscribers in March 2013. Throw in people who use the service but don't pay, and Spotify's now lays claim to 40 million active users, up from 24 million in March 2013.
Then there's Pandora, the Internet radio service with 80 million users, which dominates the streaming music industry. Those numbers have steadily increased, up from 70 million in May 2013, and listening hours have continued to increase too.
Of course, there's a big difference between the Apple Store on the one hand and Spotify and Pandora on the other. Apple's iTunes makes mountain of money, while Pandora occasionally turns a little profit and Spotify isn't even profitable yet.
Nevertheless, Apple apparently sees which way the wind is blowing. As speculated in earlier reports, Apple will be relaunching and rebuilding Beats Music -- the existing $10-a-month subscription streaming service -- under its own brand.
You can soon say goodbye to the days when download was king.
WASHINGTON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - Americans took the least amount of vacation time in almost four decades last year, forfeiting billions of dollars in compensation without scoring points with their bosses, according to an industry group analysis released on Tuesday.
The report for the U.S. Travel Association said the average American with paid time off (PTO) used 16 of 20.9 vacation days in 2013, down from an average of 20.3 days off from 1976 to 2000. It added that 169 million days of permanently forfeited U.S. vacation time equated to $52.4 billion in lost benefits.
"By choosing to work instead of taking PTO, employees are essentially working for their employers for free," the analysis said.
The report did not give a reason for the drop in vacation time but the fall coincided with the 2007-2009 recession and a slow economic recovery. An Ipsos/Reuters survey in 2010 found that only 57 percent of Americans used all their vacation time.
Wealthier workers tend to earn more vacation days, and also leave more of it on the table, according to the study. People with an annual income of more than $150,000 failed to use an average of 6.5 vacation days last year, while those with less than $29,000 did not use 3.7 days on average.
Employees who foreited paid time off do not get more raises or bonuses than those who take all their vacation time. They also report higher levels of stress at work, the survey said.
"America's work martyrs aren't more successful. We need to change our thinking. All work and no play is not going to get you ahead - it's only going to get you more stress," Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, said in a statement accompanying the report.
The analysis was prepared by Oxford Economics, a forecasting group. It used Labor Department data and a June survey of 1,303 workers by GfK Public Affairs and Corporate Communications in conjunction with Oxford Economics.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Alan Crosby)
The middle-class share of American wealth has been shrinking for the better part of three decades and recently fell to its lowest level since 1940, according to a new study by economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics.
In other words, remember the surge of the great American middle class after World War II? That's all gone, at least by one measure.
In this case, "middle class" is defined rather expansively as the bottom 90 percent of all Americans. "Wealth" is the total of home equity, stock and bond holdings, pension plans and other assets, minus debt. As such assets are mostly owned by mid- to higher-income households -- and considering most Americans define themselves as "middle-class" -- it seems reasonable to use the bottom 90 percent as a proxy for the "middle class."
Saez and Zucman discussed their paper in a blog post for the Washington Center For Equitable Growth on Monday that included this stark chart:
Debt has been the big force driving net wealth lower for the middle class, according to Saez and Zucman. Brief bubbles in stock and home prices in the 1990s and 2000s only temporarily offset the steady, depressing rise in mortgage, student-loan, credit-card and other debts for the bottom 90 percent.
"Many middle class families own homes and have pensions, but too many of these families also have much higher mortgages to repay and much higher consumer credit and student loans to service than before," Saez and Zucman wrote.
Another important factor has been that incomes have stagnated for most Americans over the past few decades, once adjusted for inflation. Along with rising debt levels, stagnant wages have made it impossible for most families to save very much money.
And who has been the beneficiary of this middle-class misery? The top 0.1 percent of Americans, whose incomes have just kept rising, and whose share of wealth has soared to levels not seen since Jay Gatsby was still staring at the blinking green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock:
In fact, the middle class is not alone in suffering from shrinking wealth. The rest of the top 10 percent of Americans below the 0.1 percent -- the "merely rich," Saez and Zucman call them -- have also suffered from falling household wealth over the past four decades.
This rising inequality of wealth can only lead to more inequality of income and wealth in the future, Saez and Zucman warned, echoing French economist Thomas Piketty. The very rich will just keep getting richer by living on the returns from their wealth, while the rest of us will keep falling behind.
After the Great Recession, which cost millions of Americans their jobs, the U.S. labor market has begun to heal. So far this year the United States has added an average of nearly 230,000 jobs per month. In the 10 years through 2022, the BLS estimates that total employment will grow by more than 15 million jobs, or nearly 11%.
However, the outlook for some occupations is bleak. For example, the number of fallers — logging workers who cut down trees — is expected to decline by 43% between 2012 and 2022, the most of any occupation. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates and projections for more than 1,000 occupations for 2012 and 2022, 24/7 Wall St. identified America’s disappearing jobs.
Click here to see the nation’s disappearing jobs
In many cases, these rapidly declining occupations are already quite rare. For instance, there were just 1,600 locomotive firers — who are responsible for monitoring train tracks and engine instruments — in the U.S. as of 2012. In all, five of the fastest declining occupations had fewer than 10,000 workers in 2012.
Yet, in other instances, occupations that are expected to contract still employ a large number of Americans. There were more than 320,000 people employed as data entry and information processing workers in 2012. There also were nearly half a million postal service workers.
The projected decline in postal service workers is especially significant. In all, the BLS forecasts that the number postal service jobs will fall by 139,000 between 2012 and 2022 — or more than all of the other disappearing occupations put together. A number of factors are expected to contribute to this decline, including continued drops in mail volumes as well as the ongoing financial struggles of the U.S. Postal Service. The USPS has already cut tens of thousands of jobs since 2012, and it is currently slated to cut another 15,000 jobs next year.
Increased automation, digitization, and technological innovation play a role in the decline of several of the fastest shrinking occupations. “We definitely think that technology and automation are a factor with some of these [jobs],” Martin Kohli, chief regional economist at the BLS, told 24/7 Wall St.
The development of email has reduced mail volumes and, as a result, the need for postal service workers. Automated sorting systems have further reduced the need for human sorting. Similarly, motion picture projectionists have become less common as digital projection replaces traditional film rolls, Kohli said.
International trade can also play a part in the decline of an occupation. Specifically, Kohli identified free trade and imports as factors impacting textile occupations. Trade, Kohli said, “reduces the demand for people to make shoes and textiles in this country, because imported shoes and cloth, often from Asia, cost relatively little.” At the same time, he noted that this allows Americans to focus on other industries, such as high-level manufacturing and providing financial services. Semiconductor processors, too, have become less-common in the U.S., as many businesses have elected to outsource manufacturing work abroad and focus on design, marketing, and distribution.
To determine the jobs with the greatest forecast percentage decline in employment, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed BLS Employment Projections program data for 2012 and 2022. Most of these occupations refer to a specific job. In a few cases — postal service workers, data entry and information processing workers, and textile machine setters, operators, and tenders — we used a broader classification to reflect that multiple jobs in the larger job category would be among the fastest shrinking. Where several occupations were similar in their description, such as textile machine workers and fabric and apparel patternmakers, we selected only one occupation. Employment figures from the BLS for 2012 represent estimates, while figures for 2022 represent forecasts. Median annual wage figures are for 2012. Further information on each occupation came from the BLS’ Occupational Outlook Handbook.
These are America’s Disappearing Jobs:
America’s Disappearing Jobs
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -22.5%
> Number employed, 2012: 20,900
> Number employed, 2022: 16,200
> Median annual income: $33,940
> Educational qualification: High school diploma
Overall, the number of all metal and plastic machine workers is projected to decline by 6% between 2012 and 2022. The decline is expected to be greatest among drilling and boring machine workers, who operate and repair drilling machinery used in plastics and metals manufacturing. The number of such jobs is expected to decline by more than 22%. Foreign competition and especially technological advancement are expected to account for much of the job decline in metals and plastics manufacturing. As a result, workers in the field that can operate and program computer numerically-controlled (CNC) machines are expected to have the most job opportunities going forward.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -23.4%
> Number employed, 2012: 1,300
> Number employed, 2022: 1,000
> Median annual income: $34,250
> Educational qualification: High school diploma
The number of animal breeders is expected to decline by more than 23% between 2012 and 2022. Breeders use their knowledge of animal genetics to help farmers breed more productive farm animals. As of 2012, more than three-quarters of all animal breeders were self-employed. The total number of people working as breeders is already quite low — around 1,300 as of 2012. The BLS expects agricultural employment to decline in the coming years as a result of technological advancement.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -23.5%
> Number employed, 2012: 76,300
> Number employed, 2022: 58,300
> Median annual income: $25,520
> Educational qualification: N/A
Textile machine workers can operate a range of equipment used in bleaching, dyeing, cutting, knitting, weaving, winding, twisting, and drawing out textiles. However, lower wages overseas have, in the past, contributed to a decline in textile manufacturing, after U.S. import quotas were repealed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Jobs for textile, apparel, and furnishings workers are expected to drop by about 7% between 2012 and 2022. Much of this decline is expected to be among textile machine workers, which are projected to lose nearly 18,000 jobs, or 23.5%.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -24.8%
> Number employed, 2012: 324,600
> Number employed, 2022: 244,200
> Median annual income: $30,100
> Educational qualification: N/A
Jobs in data entry and information processing include a number of functions. While some workers mostly type various documents, letters, and forms for an employer, others primarily handle entering and verifying data. The BLS expects the number of workers in such positions is expected to decline by nearly 25%, or over 80,000 workers, between 2012 and 2022. Yet, occupations that the BLS considers to be similar are expected to see notable increases, suggesting some of these workers may be able to switch jobs. The number of secretaries and administrative assistants is expected to rise by almost 500,000, or 12%, in that time.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -26.5%
> Number employed, 2012: 8,000
> Number employed, 2022: 5,800
> Median annual income: $19,830
> Educational qualification: Less than high school
Motion picture projectionists operate projection and sound equipment. The number of such jobs is expected to drop by more than 26% between 2012 and 2022, largely due to the shift to digital projection. While the educational requirements for the job are limited — being a projectionist does not require a high school diploma — pay is also quite low. As of 2012, the median annual wage for a projectionist was just $19,830, versus a national median wage of $34,750 across all occupations.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -27.1%
> Number employed, 2012: 21,300
> Number employed, 2022: 15,500
> Median annual income: $33,020
> Educational qualification: Associate’s degree
Semiconductor processors oversee the manufacturing process by cleaning silicon, monitoring machinery, and testing circuits to ensure they function correctly. Processors work in perfectly clean rooms while wearing lightweight attire called “bunny suits” in order to prevent dust particles from damaging semiconductors. The combination of automation and foreign manufacturing is expected to reduce the number of processors by more than one-fourth between 2012 and 2022. Today, a number of major U.S. companies such as Broadcom and Qualcomm are “fabless” chip makers, meaning they outsource manufacturing operations, often to other countries.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -28.3%
> Number employed, 2012: 491,600
> Number employed, 2022: 352,600
> Median annual income: $53,100
> Educational qualification: N/A
The number of postal service workers in general is projected to drop by more than 28% from 2012 to 2022, with postal service clerks expected to experience the biggest percentage drop. According to the BLS, “automated sorting systems, cluster mailboxes, and tight budgets” are all expected to lead to lower postal worker employment. The U.S. Postal Service has struggled for years to repair its finances, and posted a net loss of nearly $5 billion last year amid a decline in mail volume that will likely continue. In response to these declines, the USPS cut hours worked by 2.3% in 2012, and by an additional 1.1% last year. The USPS forecasts that it will run a multi-billion dollar loss in fiscal 2014. It has also announced plans to cut up to 15,000 jobs in 2015, an action that is being opposed by 50 U.S. senators.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -35.3%
> Number employed, 2012: 3,500
> Number employed, 2022: 2,300
> Median annual income: $24,310
> Educational qualification: High school diploma
Jobs for shoe machine operators and tenders, who work to build shoes and shoe parts, are projected to drop by more than a third between 2012 and 2022. Yet, such jobs are already quite rare in the U.S., with only 3,500 people working in the field as of 2012. Today, many footwear makers outsource their manufacturing to foreign countries and companies. One such company headquartered in Hong Kong, Yue Yuen, employed roughly 413,000 people at the end of 2013. Major companies that outsource manufacturing to Yue Yuen include Nike, Adidas, and Puma.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -42.0%
> Number employed, 2012: 1,600
> Number employed, 2022: 900
> Median annual income: $44,920
> Educational qualification: High school diploma
Locomotive firers are responsible for monitoring train tracks for debris, and they check various instruments in order to ensure that no problems are present with the trains’ engines. The job is currently very rare, with less than 2,000 workers as of 2012 — a number that is expected to drop far more in the coming decade. Already, many such jobs have become obsolete as automation has taken the place of people, with locomotive engineers and conductors filling most of these roles. A handful of companies — BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific, as well as the national rail operator, Amtrak — employ most railroad workers.
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> Pct. change in employment 2012 – 2022: -43.3%
> Number employed, 2012: 6,600
> Number employed, 2022: 3,800
> Median annual income: $35,250
> Educational qualification: High school diploma
Fallers are logging workers that cut down trees. According to the BLS, fallers face numerous job pressures that are projected to cut jobs by roughly 43%. Despite a focus on safety, jobs in logging are often dangerous due to the machinery used and the dangers of falling branches. According to the BLS, fallers face numerous job pressures, including increased mechanization, conservation efforts, and foreign competition, that are projected to cut jobs by roughly 43%. Logging workers are already something of a rare occupation. As of 2012, there were just under 44,000 logging workers in the U.S., of which roughly 6,600 were fallers. The number of logging workers, overall, is expected to decline by 8.7% from 2012 to 2022.
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