A majority of workers do not take a regular lunch break, according to a new online poll by Right Management, a talent and career management expert within employment services company Manpower. When asked if they take a break for lunch at work, 47 percent said “almost always” while 13 percent said “seldom, if ever.” Employees who choose to eat at their desks was 20 percent, and only those that take a lunch break “from time to time” clocked in at 19 percent. The numbers may be food for thought as employees are forced to do more with less, according to…
Monthly Archives: September, 2010
It’s deja vu all over again. A Democratic president comes to Washington, runs up against rabid hostility from the GOP, and faces serious trouble in his first midterm elections. Sound familiar yet? It gets better. Some Republicans are openly advocating shutting down the government as part of a gambit to gut the health care reform bill passed earlier this year. Joe Miller, Alaska’s Republican candidate for Senate and tea party favorite, said in an interview that he wants to quash health care reform and other “socialist aspects of government,” such as Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements. Fairbanks’ Daily News-Miner…
Call it perfect timing. Within days of my story about Challenge.gov running in the paper, the Obama administration announced the site’s launch today. I’ve browsed challenge.gov, and it really is user-friendly. Using the browse government challenge link, you can see the featured challenges, submission deadlines and the number of supporters. Already, there are 36 challenges up for the public to view, and results are searchable by category or organization. You can even follow the website on Twitter. Here’s a look at some of the newest challenges: Game Day Challenge- Reduce waste at your college’s football games. Reciepes for Healthy Kids: $12,000 in prizes to…
Well over half of the employees once under the Defense Department’s ill-fated National Security Personnel System are now back on the General Schedule. According to the latest data from the Pentagon’s NSPS Transition Office, 127,962 employees had been transitioned out of the pay-for-performance program as of Aug. 15 — more than 56 percent of the roughly 226,000 employees under the system at its peak. Of those who have transitioned, 20 percent — or 25,893 — have been placed on pay retention because they received larger raises under NSPS than they would have under GS, and their salaries fall above their…
Happy Friday! To ease you into your Labor Day weekend, enjoy a few headlines from The Onion, such as “Pentagon Ripped Off By Shady Weapons Dealer:” Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted losing $192 million in defense funds Tuesday when he unwittingly purchased a large number of bogus BGM-109 Tomahawk missiles from a disreputable arms dealer known only as “Steve.” “When I got the crate open at the office, it turned out the ‘missiles’ were nothing more than old sewer pipes filled with newspapers and capped with construction cones, all painted to look legit,” Gates said. That’s probably the Onion’s best…
The Kaiser Family Foundation today released a sobering report about the state of health care costs in America. Employees are paying on average $4,000 per year for their share of family health care coverage this year. That’s 14 percent, or $482, more than they paid last year. That far outpaces the overall 3 percent increase in family health premiums, meaning families are increasingly shouldering the burden of health care costs. Overall, average annual family health care premium costs have increased by 114 percent since 2000, from $6,438 to $13,770. But over that time, workers’ shares have increased by 147 percent,…
The Washington Post’s Political Economy blog today reported that Elizabeth Warren — the left’s hands-down favorite to run the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — has unexpectedly dropped a fall class she was scheduled to teach at Harvard. This last-minute change for Warren’s contracting law class is fueling speculation that she could be nominated soon, and is gearing up for what could be a grueling confirmation battle. (Long story short, liberals love her and think she’d stand up to banks running amok; conservatives view her as a zealot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.) The Post said that even…
Got a few dozen miners who are going to be trapped in a confined space for a few months? Need to figure out how to keep them from growing depressed, bored or otherwise driving each other crazy? Call NASA, of course. USA Today reports that NASA is lending its psychiatric assistance to 33 Chilean miners who are stuck in a collapsed mine and are two to four months away from rescue. For obvious reasons, NASA has put a lot of thought into how people relate to one another when they’re stuck in a tin can for months at a time…
Despite an ugly financial backdrop, the U.S. Postal Service kicked off talks this afternoon on a new contract with the largest of its four unions with an official note of optimism. “We have worked successfully with our unions in the past to help transform the Postal Service and we hope to maintain this momentum during these negotiations,” said Anthony Vegliante, USPS’s chief human resources officer, in a news release marking the start of negotiations with the American Postal Workers Union, which represents some 211.000 clerks, mechanics, custodians and other workers. That chin-up attitude was matched in a separate statement by…
The Combined Federal Campaign season begins today, and Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry is hoping to get as many feds participating as possible. Berry yesterday sent a memo to agency leaders asking them to encourage employees to donate to charities through the CFC, and asked them to make a particular effort to educate newly-hired feds. Berry said he’s worried that when older feds — many of whom have probably been donating for years — retire, the CFC will see a drop in donations unless younger feds take the baton. He suggested leaders send e-mails to their employees, including…