Pennsylvania Moving to Ban Discrimination Against Unemployed

By Eric B. Meyer

In 2011, New Jersey passed a law banning discrimination against the unemployed. Will Pennsylvania follow suit in 2013?

The ball is rolling….

The Pennsylvania House introduced its own unemployment-discrimination bill on January 22, 2013, and you can view a copy of it here.

Here’s the Cliffs Notes version: Read more…

Weekly Wrap: The State of HR Today? By One Account, It May be Picking Up

A New Year always seems to bring a lot of new surveys and studies, but this one with Chief HR officers has some pretty interesting findings and insights on first glance.

Titled the 2012 Chief HR Officer Data Survey, it comes from the Consero Group, a company that describes itself as “an international leader in creating high-level, invitation-only events for senior executives.” I’m not terribly familiar with Consero, but the top-line finding they were touting from the study certainly jumped out at me:

“According to the survey, Fortune 1000 corporations are increasing investment in HR staffing and increasing overall HR budgets” Read more…

No Surprises in January Job Growth, But 2012′s Numbers Look a Bit Better

There were no real surprises in January’s jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

The U.S. economy added 157,000 jobs in January, most, as usual, in the services sector. Unemployment, meanwhile, crept up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent.

Economists were mostly expecting the numbers. Most estimates earlier in the week averaged out between about 160,000 and 165,000 new jobs. They had predicted December’s 7.8 percent unemployment rate would be unchanged. A Forbes survey suggested the rate might decrease to 7.7 percent. Read more…

Reliable Work Ethic: How About 44 Years and Never Once Called In Sick?

Postal workers get a bad rap and are frequent fodder for comedians and late night talk show hosts. But aside from the renowned story of Fred in The Fred Factor, here’s another glowing example of a remarkable postal worker.

“It’s just part of our work ethic,” Deborah Ford said when asked how she’s retiring from the U.S. Postal Service after 44 years without ever calling in sick. The “our’”part of her response was referring to her 86 year-old father who also never missed work.

Naturally, over the course of four and a half decades there were days when Ford was under the weather, but she said she would simply “shake it off.” She used her vacation days instead of sick days when she had a medical appointment or something that caused her to miss work. Read more…

What Happens When Worker Posts “I’d Like to Get Fired” on Facebook?

By Eric B. Meyer

Want to know what happens when an employee posts “I’d like to get fired on Facebook”? I’ll give you a hint.

The lede from this KTVK report in Phoenix is: “A single sentence posted on Facebook changed Amy McClenathan’s life forever.”

Read more…

Facebook’s Graph Search: Remember, It’s All About Discovering People

You’ve probably heard the hype about Facebook’s new search utility, which it calls Graph Search.

Unveiled just a couples weeks ago, it’s already being described as everything from a LinkedIn killer to a privacy killer, and a recruiter’s new best friend. For every one of those you can find an article — or 100 — that says the opposite.

Except when it comes to recruiting. While calling it a best friend may be premature, it won’t be long before Graph Search becomes as valuable to recruiters as Google and LinkedIn. Read more…

What Does the Appeals Court Decision Mean For the NLRB?

By James M. Walters

Last Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a long-awaited ruling refusing to enforce the National Labor Relations Board’s bargaining order against a petitioning employer. The basis for the court’s decision was the improper appointment of three members of the NLRB (see Noel Canning v. NLRB).

The Appeals Court opinion was authored by Chief Judge David Sentelle, and joined by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson and Judge Thomas Griffith (who concurred in the opinion). This decision was unique, in that it was ultimately decided on purely constitutional grounds, holding that President Barack Obama’s attempted recess appointments of three NLRB members in January of 2012 were constitutionally impermissible. Read more…

Today’s College Recruiting Picture: It’s Finally Starting to Perk Up

Things are looking modestly up for most college graduates this coming year (and perhaps a bit more competitive for recruiters).

That’s the broad conclusion of a recently released report by Dr. Phil Gardner of the College Employment Research Institute. Tipped off to me by Matthew Stollak, the report is long and intensive. Unlike whitepapers, infographics and simplistic research we often get to see in employment, the conc