Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
Some quick catch-up from the past week:
First of all, in New Jersey, the Senate's Labor Committee heard testimony about the state's proposed "ban the box" legislation, limiting when employers can inquire about an applicant's criminal history. The legislation essentially requires employers to eliminate questions about the person's record until a conditional offer is made. Advocates say that existing practices lump people with minor offenses into the same category as serious criminals, denying them all a chance to find work. Opponents say the legislation poses safety risks, even during the interview process, and wastes time, particularly if the crime relates to the job. Click here to read the Senate version of the bill.
“A bad left turn in anyone’s life doesn’t necessarily mean that a human being doesn’t have the skills and abilities to be a productive member of society,” Al Koeppe, of Newark Alliance, testified, according to a report by the Associated Press. As the former president of PSEG, or Public Service Enterprise Group, Koeppe said, he hired many people who had a criminal past, and many of them worked harder than those that did not because they knew how hard getting a job was.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
What can employees do when their boss is a jerk, when he/she makes them work extra hours or not enough hours, when there are unreasonable demands, or the pay is bad or the conditions unsafe? Answer: They can help themselves.
Does that sound like a union? Maybe, but for young people in particular, the u-word might be unfamiliar, or even off-putting. That's what is so interesting about a new web site launched this week by an AFL-CIO affiliated organization, Working America.
FixMyJob.com talks about workers can help themselves without even one mention of the word union and even incorporates a wild You-Tube video where the workers and the boss dance themselves into adversarial frenzy. At one point, as workers are dancing in what looks an empty office, the words, "When workers stick together & protect each other on the job: we are more likely to have a set schedule of regular hours, we are 30 percent more likely to get paid sick leave" and the list goes on.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
Roofer Anthony Soli, 42, hasn't been sleeping well.
He keeps replaying Wednesday's memories, the loud crash, the horrifying sight of a building under demolition collapsing onto the Salvation Army Thrift Store, the mad scramble down the scaffolding, the rush into the rubble to find someone to save, the voices calling, `help me, help me, help me.' Then, hours later, hearing the news that six people had died.
On Wednesday, Soli and fellow members of Local 30 of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers, were working on the roof of the College of Physicians building, just across the alley from the building collapse at 22d and Market Streets in Philadelphia. They were among the first on the scene.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
The irony of the situation wasn't lost on Matt Zinman, 46, hustling hard at a preview party of "The Internship" last week. Twenty-plus years ago, he was an intern for a movie production company and he spent his internship setting up preview parties for movies, with the aim of drawing an audience of his peers, then college students. Now he's hustling to establish the Internship Institute, a nonprofit in Newtown dedicated to improving the quality of internships.
The Internship movie focuses on two salesmen, Billy (Vince Vaughn) and Nick (Owen Wilson), who, 40ish, find themselves out of work because their glad-handing one-on-one personal style is no longer needed in a digital world where sales are conducted online. But their gift of gab doesn't desert them -- the duo that made a name for itself in the 2005 movie "Wedding Crashers" crashes Google. Amazingly, Billy and Nick manage to talk their way into internships in the Googly epicenter of the digital universe. Next challenge? Prove to their brainy college-student colleagues that they are not obsolete.
Once they end up in Google, Billy and Nick are relentless. It's a message that Zinman, himself 40ish, and a single father of a 12-year-old, takes to heart. "For myself, it's their never-give-up spirit that applies to the necessity to really fight and for me to persevere in my work in the internship realm," Zinman said Tuesday after the preview crowd and reviewers left the theater. The movie opened Friday.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
Filing for unemployment, fighting off foreclosure, preventing utility shutoffs, credit card issues, applying for expungement of criminal records, handling credit reports -- all these legal issues can and do come up for the unemployed. But what jobless person can afford a lawyer?
So, set aside Monday, June 10, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. when a lawyer from Legal Aid of Southeastern Pennsylvania will speak to the Barnabas Group, a church-based support group for the unemployed which meets weekly at the Calvary Fellowship Church in Downingtown.
The June 17 topic is "Marketing Yourself for New Employment."
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
On the very night that emergency personnel were digging through the rubble in search of employees and shoppers trapped in a collapsed building, three leaders in the field of workplace safety were honored -- blocks away -- during graduation ceremonies for the District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund.
They were David Michaels, assistant secretary of Labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Barbara Rahke, executive director of Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Health and Safety (PhilaPOSH), Dr. Arthur Frank, chairman of the department of environmental and occupational health at Drexel University's School of Public Health.
“Every year in this country 4 million workers suffer a workplace injury. Each day, 12 workers suffer a workplace fatality. There is no stronger advocate for the rights of working people than Dr. Michaels. He is committed to ensuring a safe workplace for that nation’s 130 million workers,” said Cheryl Feldman, executive director of the Training Fund.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
"It's My Business" is the name of a new group formed to "fight for the rights of independent contractors to choose a work lifestyle that's best for them."
Chaired by former U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas, the coalition says it will give voice to the 10.3 million people who have "chosen to be their own bosses and build their own businesses," Lincoln said in a statement launching the group. "Independent contractors are significant drivers of job growth in our economy and often their impact is not recognized."
A walk through its web site does not reveal much about who is behind this group or how it is being funded, but there is a clue in the list of members: FedEx Ground. For years, FedEx Ground has been involved in lawsuits over whether the drivers are independent contractors or employees subject to overtime. It is telling that the list of independent contractor members does not include a long list of people who identify themselves as independent contractors whose business it is making FedEx Ground deliveries, but instead, FedEx Ground itself.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
"Treat each day like a job interview," John A. Challenger, chief executive of the Chicago-based outplacement company, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, advises college students embarking on summer internships.
"You want to set yourself apart from your fellow interns by exceeding expectations," Challenger wrote, pointing out that companies use internships to evaluate the performance of potential employees under real-world conditions. Keep in mind that Challenger's company provides job-seeking advice to people who have lost their jobs.
"The higher up the executive you impress," Challenger wrote, "the greater the odds that a permanent position will be found for you." Remember, he said, that the person supervising the intern may be relatively low on the corporate totem-pole, so interns need to be deliberate in their efforts to meet managers and executives who make hiring decisions.
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
The graduation euphoria fades away, the parties are over, and now, you, as a parent, have a young graduate at home, unemployed. How can you help? How much should you help? How do you harness your natural inclination to "fix" things? How do you help your child avoid discouragement? How do you motivate? How do you stay out of the way?
"We start off talking about what the ground rules are," said John Touey, a partner at Salveson Stetson Group, a Radnor executive search firm. On Tuesday, the group hosts a job-search workshop for college graduates - and their parents -- at Brandywine Realty Trust's office in Radnor. It's an interesting format. Students get job search tips from a coach from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The parents have a separate workshop that goes from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Then both sides get together for a networking cocktail party from 5 to 6. p.m.
Sometimes we think we should have the drinks during the parent session," Touey joked, saying it sometimes turns into a "group therapy session. There is some anxiety about having the child at home."
Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer
When a whole generation of employees packs up and quits early, it behooves an employer to take notice, which is exactly what one of the nation's largest accounting firms did.
Here's the problem that PwC faced: The company began to notice that Millennials (which it defines as those born from 1980 to 1995, were leaving the firm in growing numbers after a few years. "Even more alarmingly, a significant majority of them appeared to lack interest in the traditional professional services career path, one that required an intense work commitment early in their career in exchange for the chance to make partner later on."
These words come from the introduction to a massive employee survey and study that PwC, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, undertook in response to its employment problem. Currently, two out of three company employees are Millennials and in three years, nearly 80 percent will be Millennials. Something had to change.
