Workplace Issues Today
Daily News for Thursday, May 8, 2008
Selected by the Catherwood Library Reference Staff each Monday through Friday, excluding University holidays, WIT is a free alert service, providing abstracts and links to workplace-related news stories covered in the major media. Subscribe to WIT »
Established in 1999, this service also includes a searchable archive.
Worker productivity rises, labor costs drop
Worker productivity rose by a better-than-expected amount in the first three months of the year while labor cost pressures eased, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday. The Federal Reserve Board, meanwhile, reported that consumer borrowing rose in March at the fastest pace in four months, more than double the increase of the previous month. Productivity, the amount of output for an hour of work, increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the first quarter, slightly higher than the 1.5 percent increase expected. In a sign that inflation could be easing, labor cost pressures slowed a bit. Unit labor costs rose at an annual rate of 2.2 percent, down from a 2.8 percent rise in the final three months of last year.
See “Productivity Increases as Debts Accumulate,” by Associated Press, The New York Times, May 08 2008 (JRL)
Workers in Mariana Islands to receive U.S. labor protections
Workers in the Mariana Islands will receive the protection of U.S. labor law under a bill signed Thursday by President Bush. Debate over whether to extend federal labor and immigration law to the Marianas, in the northwestern Pacific, had been sullied by reports of sweatshop labor and past associations with the lobbying scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, whose firm was hired by the islands to oppose the changes. The measure, approved by Congress last month, creates a federally run guest-worker program in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which includes Saipan and 13 other islands north of Guam. It also gives the commonwealth a delegate in the House with limited voting powers.
See “Bush signs bill extending US labor, immigration law to Mariana Islands,” by Matthew Daly, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 08 2008 (JRL)
Jobless numbers fall dramatically
The number of newly laid off workers seeking unemployment benefits dropped much more than expected last week. The Labor Department reported Thursday that applications for unemployment benefits fell to 365,000, a decline of 18,000 from the previous week. Economists had been looking for a much smaller decrease of around 5,000. Weekly jobless claims have been exceptionally volatile in recent weeks because of strike-related layoffs in the auto industry and an unusually early Easter, which has played havoc with the government's seasonal adjustment measurements. Many economists believe that a prolonged housing slump and severe credit crisis have pushed the economy into a recession.
See “Jobless claims post sharp decline,” by Martin Crutsinger, San Francisco Chronicle, May 08 2008 (JRL)
