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<ul class="summary-list"><li>A four-day work week trial at a UK council cut staff turnover by 39%, researchers from two universities said.</li><li>The council saved almost $500,000, and worker mental health and motivation improved.</li></ul>A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/4-day-workweek-evidence-prevent-burnout-productivity-ai-well-being-2023-4">four-day workweek reduces staff turnover, improves employee mental health,</a> and saves money, according to the largest public sector trial held in the UK.On Monday, academics at two British universities — Cambridge and Salford — released <a target="_blank" href="https://scambs.moderngov.co.uk/documents/g9810/Public%20reports%20pack%20Monday%2015-Jul-2024%2010.30%20Employment%20and%20Staffing%20Committee.pdf?T=10">their findings</a> from a 15-month trial of a shortened working week.The experiment, which started in January 2023, was introduced by South Cambridgeshire District Council in southeast England.It is the largest public sector trial of the four-day workweek held so far in the UK, involving 697 employees, including office and waste workers.As part of the project, people were expected to complete 100% of their work in 80% of the time for full pay.Researchers assessed 24 areas, such as worker motivation, staff mental health, and workers' commitment to their roles.Out of the 24 areas assessed, performance improved or stayed the same in a total of 22. Staff turnover was reduced by 39%, significantly lowering recruitment demand. The number of external applicants for open roles also greatly increased, with 76% reporting the four-day week trial as influencing them to apply for open positions.Prof Daiga Kamerāde, one of the report's authors and a professor of work and wellbeing at the University of Salford, told Business Insider: "Organizations that will be too reluctant to introduce the four-day week might start falling behind, because that's what we see in other trials already.""Organizations who are forerunners in the industry of four-day workweek trials attract the best talent around because people say if I can do four days a week or five days a week, I'm going to go where I can do four days a week," she said.The project helped the council to save £371,500 ($476,980), mainly from agency staff costs, which related to only 10 posts.Workers saw their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-four-day-workweek-helps-workers-employers-science-evidence-2023-2">mental and physical health improve</a> and their motivation levels rise, researchers said."You can see across the board, that if anything, there's a lot more evidence that things improved during the period of the trial compared to before the trial," Prof Brendan Burchell, another author of the report and a professor at the faculty of Human, Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge, told BI.Discussing the positive outcomes of the four-day workweek experiment, he said: "It should give other organizations a lot of confidence that this is definitely something worth looking at."There were just two drawbacks discovered from the shorter week. Rent collected from social housing mildly declined, and the average number of days to re-let housing stock worsened slightly. Burchell said national problems such as the cost-of-living crisis and people struggling to pay their bills were partially responsible for the trial's problematic aspects.The US, Canada, Ireland, and Germany are among the countries that have trialed the shortened working week. Belgium became the first country to legislate for a four-day week in February 2022.In a post-pandemic world already accustomed to remote and hybrid work patterns, with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/most-companies-biggest-4-day-work-week-trial-made-permanent-2024-2">more</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/four-day-workweek-companies-profits-workers-happier-efficient-takano-2023-7">more</a> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/benefits-of-four-day-work-week-global-study-2022-12">reports</a> coming back hailing the benefits of prolonged weekends, the movement is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-cohen-4-day-workweek-artificial-intelligence-ai-golf-investment-2024-4">gaining traction</a>."When workers are better rested, when they have a better work-life balance, and they have more time to themselves outside of work, they then actually perform better at their job," Joe Ryle, the campaign director at 4 Day Week, a campaign to transition to a shorter working week with no loss of pay, told BI."We're finding that people are doing all sorts of things on their day off, like volunteering in the community," he said."At the end of the day, that's what this is all about, it's about creating a society where we can all live happier and healthier lives."

A public sector 4-day workweek trial had practically no drawbacks, researchers found

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-microsoft-openai-lawsuit-amended-monopoly-ai-sam-altman-2024-11">Elon Musk has added Microsoft and Reid Hoffman as defendants</a> in his lawsuit against OpenAI.</li><li>Musk is accusing OpenAI and Microsoft, which have a partnership worth billions, of building an AI monopoly.</li></ul>Elon Musk is doubling down on his lawsuit against OpenAI, and he's taking issue with what they pay employees.Musk added Microsoft and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reid-hoffman">Reid Hoffman</a>, who is a Microsoft board member and former OpenAI board member, as defendants in his lawsuit against OpenAI. Microsoft has poured nearly $14 billion in OpenAI, including a $10 billion investment it announced last year.<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/history-of-elon-musk-and-sam-altman-relationship-feuds-2023-3">Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015</a> but has since severed ties and become one of its most biggest critics. He left its board in 2018 and created <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-xai-on-track-valued-at-more-than-x-2024-10">his own AI company, xAI</a>, last year.In his complaint, Musk alleges that OpenAI and Microsoft are engaging in anticompetitive practices, including "lavish compensation," to corner the market on generative AI."OpenAI has attempted to starve competitors of AI talent by aggressively recruiting employees with offers of lavish compensation, and is on track to spend $1.5 billion on personnel for just 1,500 employees," his lawyers wrote in the amended complaint.So just how much does OpenAI pay its employees?Since it's a private company, OpenAI isn't required to report compensation data in the way public companies must. But we have some indicators.Levels.fyi, which tracks compensation data at tech firms and startups, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.levels.fyi/companies/openai/salaries">says</a> total yearly compensation at OpenAI ranges from $144,275 for a technical writer to $1,338,750 for a software engineer. OpenAI's median yearly total compensation is $534,197, according to data reported on the tracker.For software engineers specifically, the median yearly total compensation reported on Levels.fyi is $810,000 at OpenAI compared to $257,500 in the tech hub of the San Francisco Bay Area more broadly.Levels.fyi <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.levels.fyi/offerings/data/">says</a> it mostly uses self-reported user data but also verifies some reported compensation with documents like offer letters and pay statements that users can choose to submit.The most common salary range for an engineering role on OpenAI's website, not including stock awards or bonuses, is $200,000 to $370,000, Roger Lee, co-founder of compensation benchmarking firm Comprehensive.io, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-22/openai-staff-mutiny-for-sam-altman-shows-rare-skills-equal-leverage">told</a> Bloomberg last year. Compensation in listings for more specialized positions were higher at $300,000 to $450,000, he added.Amid the generative AI boom, the industry has largely enjoyed higher pay and greater job security against mass layoffs than the rest of the tech sector outside of AI.OpenAI, Microsoft, and Hoffman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Musk first <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sues-sam-altman-betrays-openai-mission-chatgpt-2024-3">sued OpenAI and its cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman</a> in March, accusing the company of deviating from its "founding agreement" to be nonprofit by partnering with Microsoft. OpenAI responded that <a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-calls-elon-musk-lawsuit-incoherent-2024-3">the lawsuit was "incoherent" and "contradictory."</a>Musk <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-drops-lawsuit-against-sam-altman-and-openai-2024-6">dropped his lawsuit</a> without explanation in June before <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-sues-openai-sam-altman-again-why-2024-8">filing the latest suit in August</a>, arguing that OpenAI now prioritizes commercial interests over its original goal of building AI that's beneficial for humanity and claiming he was "deceived" into cofounding the company. OpenAI in 2019 introduced a "capped-profit" arm, and in September said it's <a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-openai-needs-to-do-to-become-for-profit-altman-2024-9">moving towards a for-profit governance structure</a>.

Elon Musk says OpenAI's compensation is 'lavish.' Here's how much employees get paid.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Job titles in the $4.3 trillion hedge-fund industry vary greatly from firm to firm.</li><li>The lack of uniformity allows both firms and employees to present themselves in the best light.</li></ul>The well-publicized battle between David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital and its former employee James Fishback can seem, to industry outsiders especially, a bit trivial.While Fishback's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/greenlight-former-macro-analyst-sues-david-einhorn-2024-10">most recent legal filing claims age discrimination</a> and asks for at least $5 million from his old firm, the genesis of the messy dispute involves Fishback's title during the two-plus years he spent at Greenlight.He said he was the firm's head of macro. The firm said he was just an analyst — and an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/david-einhorns-files-lawsuit-against-james-fishback-2024-6">unproductive one at that</a>. Lawsuits, spiteful tweets, and plenty of memes <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/david-einhorn-greenlight-lawsuit-james-fishback-2024-5">ensued</a>.While the disagreement is on the extreme end of the spectrum, hedge-fund industry veterans say title confusion, inflation, and misalignment are rampant.Titles within banks and private equity firms follow a de facto industry standard. A managing director at Morgan Stanley does more or less the same thing an MD at Goldman Sachs does.This is not the case in the hedge-fund world.While the biggest managers <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/morgan-stanley-prime-brokerage-novick-shaw-startup-hedge-fund-mistakes-2024-9">have become more institutional</a>, the $4.3 trillion industry is more opaque and founder-led than other sections of finance.Hedge funds are a disparate group spanning firms with thousands of people worldwide and new launches with a pair of analysts and a Bloomberg terminal. This lack of uniformity and the relentless war for talent has firms and employees alike taking advantage of the ambiguity.Fishback, for example, references not an offer letter or an internal HR system to prove his title in his legal filings but an email sent to a third party by Greenlight's chief operating officer offhandedly referring to Fishback as the firm's "head of macro."Recruiters and hiring managers at big-name funds say candidates constantly give themselves more prestigious-sounding titles on LinkedIn. A dozen headhunters, fund executives, consultants, and others who spoke with Business Insider argued that as firms build out the non-investment sides of their businesses to support their growth, titles will only get more inflated."It's extremely tough to know who's real and who isn't," said one longtime recruiter who mostly focuses on quant firms and large multistrategy managers."An MD title at the banks, that means something. An MD title at a hedge fund doesn't mean anything."<h2 id="731f7cfe-0e1f-42aa-921c-ef631afc0183">Global heads, chairmen, investment officers, and more</h2>As one person who works in a hiring position at a large multistrategy firm told BI, "titles are free" — and firms use them. Industry insiders said a title could be a carrot for recruiting or retention, especially as the biggest funds become more institutional and add more non-investment roles to their firms.More than 200 people who work at the $64 billion firm Citadel have a title on LinkedIn that deems them the "head" of some part of the business, for example. That's roughly one out of every 14 people within the hedge fund — and doesn't include its founder, Ken Griffin; its chief operating officer, Gerald Beeson; and others on the leadership team.A person close to the Miami-based firm said Citadel's flat structure means that no matter an individual's title, the internal expectations to produce are very high.This person added that Citadel's pursuit of top external talent — the firm just hired Apple's top recruiter, Sjoerd Gehring, to be its chief people officer, and it poached Google's Paul Darrah this year to be its chief workplace officer — means some accomplished employees receive big titles to match their experience.Jose Gamez, for example, spent nearly 20 years working as a chef at several Four Seasons hotels, including five years leading the kitchen at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/coronavirus-citadel-securities-four-seasons-florida.html">the one in Palm Beach that Citadel Securities took over</a> during the pandemic. He's now the global head of culinary and executive chef for Citadel and Citadel Securities.Even for investing talent, titles can be tricky to understand from the outside, in many cases, because of the differing internal structures across the industry that obscure who actually makes trading decisions.Rokos has two dozen employees with the title "investment officer" in their LinkedIn profiles. A person familiar with the London-based firm said that while these employees sit somewhere between an analyst and a portfolio manager, the fact that its billionaire founder, Chris Rokos, makes all investment calls for the fund complicates titles. The manager declined to comment.At the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/who-bobby-jain-has-hired-jain-capital-hedge-fund-launch-2023-12">newly launched Jain Global</a>, there is a chairman of fundamental equities, Paul Enright, and a chief investment officer of fundamental equities, Townie Wells. Wells, a person familiar with the matter said, manages a portfolio on top of running the business, while Enright is more focused on mentorship and talent development.The chairman title is uncommon in hedge funds, especially for an individual business within a multistrategy manager, but the person close to Jain said it was what made the most sense for Enright, a former Viking Global portfolio manager who had been running his own money for years and decided to come back to the industry to work at the new fund.Firms can also tweak common industry titles internally.Millennium, for example, has ditched the sub-PM title, elevating those who once held that role to PM. These individuals, though, report to a senior PM, who can oversee several PMs within a pod.A person close to the firm said that as Millennium has grown, individual investing teams have become broader, necessitating more structure. All the teams at Millennium — there are more than 300 — are led by a senior PM, and it's not uncommon for PMs working under a senior PM to own part of the book and take risk themselves.In some cases, however, a PM's responsibilities can be more akin to those of a senior analyst or a sub-PM — but a PM title sounds better to external candidates."People will join because they want to be a PM," one recruiter said. "They know the power in that title."<h2 id="80e6436b-e9f6-4264-9dc3-db69994eef27">Keeping it under wraps</h2>Plenty of funds intentionally keep roles vague and closely monitor what their team members are publicly sharing about themselves.At Coatue, executives sign off on what employees put as their title on LinkedIn, people familiar with the firm's operations said. Members of Tiger Global's front-office team use "investor" as their title on LinkedIn instead of a more specific role.Quants like Marshall Wace, D.E. Shaw, and Two Sigma are famously guarded about their internal workings. At each firm, dozens of employees use catchall titles like "quantitative researcher" that can span experience levels.Both sides can be frustrating, especially for headhunters and business development pros at large firms trying to grow their teams.Oversharing or exaggerating titles can lead to inflated salaries and outside offers that aren't commensurate with a prospect's actual experience. Vague titles, on the other hand, can leave allocators struggling to understand what exactly their fees are paying for. Internally, employees who lack ownership of a specific sector or business find that their end-of-year bonuses are left to the whim of the founder.Fund executives and recruiters alike believe that the industry's institutionalization will eventually codify titles across firms. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-a-hedge-fund-job-point72-academy-applicants-2022-1">Talent-development programs at firms like Point72</a> and more structured <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-elliott-alums-are-launching-their-own-funds-2024-8">career-development paths at managers like Elliott</a> already feel more like private equity or banking than the Wild West hedge-fund days of yore.Don Steinbrugge, the CEO of the hedge-fund consultancy Agecroft Partners, said lofty-sounding roles without equivalent responsibilities — like a vice president of a bank — would have their match in hedge funds."Titles are something that's very important to people. It's something that impacts their reputation in the industry," Steinbrugge said."Over time, people will have titles that sound more important."

What's in a title? How hedge funds and their employees use the industry's lack of consistency to their advantage

India's economic engine is roaring, and the job market reflects that optimism. The latest <keyword id="20613906" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Economic-Survey" source="keywords">Economic Survey</keyword> 2023-2024 paints a picture of a growing economy brimming with opportunities, but also cautions of potential roadblocks on the road to success. <h2>Cause for celebration</h2>The good news is plentiful, if the recent Economic Survey tabled by <keyword id="20426375" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Union-Finance-Minister-Nirmala-Sitharaman" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman">Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman</keyword> is to be believed. The <keyword id="20054242" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="unemployment-rate" source="keywords">unemployment rate</keyword> has dipped to an impressive 3.2% in 2022-23, signifying a more vibrant job market. Increased participation of young people and women in the workforce presents a golden opportunity to leverage India's demographic dividend and achieve greater gender equality. Additionally, a surge in net payroll additions under the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) indicates a healthy rise in formal jobs, offering much-needed security for workers. The government's "Skill India" initiative is gaining traction, with a significant rise in the number of people undergoing skill development programs, the Economic Survey highlighted. This is crucial, as India's burgeoning tech scene, with its skyrocketing number of startups, is creating a wealth of new opportunities that demand a skilled workforce. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111920956" title="FM Nirmala Sitharaman tables Economic Survey 2023-24 in Lok Sabha" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> <h2>Challenges on the horizon </h2>However, amidst the optimism, there are challenges to navigate. While <keyword id="107950" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="artificial-intelligence" source="Orion">Artificial Intelligence</keyword> (AI) promises to revolutionise industries, it also poses a threat to some existing jobs. The Economic Survey emphasises the need to use technology for collective benefit, advocating against over-reliance on automation. Another significant hurdle is the widening <keyword id="21466653" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="skills-gap" source="keywords">skills gap</keyword>. The rapid transformation of the <keyword id="20001119" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="services-sector" source="keywords">services sector</keyword>, marked by the rise of domestic service delivery powered by technology (think online food delivery and home automation) and the diversification of India's services exports beyond traditional sectors like IT, demands a workforce equipped with specialised skills. Areas like Blockchain, Machine Learning, <keyword id="19906883" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cybersecurity" source="keywords">Cybersecurity</keyword>, <keyword id="19960489" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="cloud-computing" source="keywords">Cloud Computing</keyword>, and Web and Mobile Development are becoming increasingly important. Outdated regulations, particularly those related to land use and restrictions on women's working hours, are further hindering job creation and female labour force participation. Deregulation in these areas is crucial to unlock India's full growth potential, according to the Economic Survey. The report also highlights the need for industry to take the lead in fostering innovation and skill development. Collaboration with academia and revamped vocational education programs are key to bridge the current skill gap. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111922453" title="AI casts huge pall of uncertainty over impact on workers across skill levels: Economic Survey" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div> <h2>Opportunities beyond tech</h2>The Economic Survey identifies promising sectors with the potential to create a significant number of jobs: <ul><li>Agro-processing: This sector can be a major job generator, especially in rural areas.</li><li>Care Economy: The growing demand for elder care and childcare services presents an opportunity for skilled professionals.</li><li>Tourism: While AI might moderate India's services export growth, the report emphasises the importance of the <keyword id="20260982" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="tourism-sector" source="keywords">tourism sector</keyword>, which is relatively less skill-dependent, for employment generation. To capitalise on this opportunity, public policy should focus on enhancing the tourism sector's infrastructure and services.</li></ul><h2>Upskilling for the future</h2>India's job market is on an exciting trajectory. But addressing the skills gap, adapting to technological advancements and promoting innovation is crucial. By upskilling the workforce through government and industry collaboration, India can become a high-value partner in areas like cybersecurity and enterprise management. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="111923191" title="Economic Survey 2024 – industries grow by 9.5%, fueling economic growth to 8.2%" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>

Economic Survey 2023-2024 highlights emerging job trends in AI, Cybersecurity, 3D Printing and Web Development

<ul class="summary-list"><li>A former SAP account manager is breaking her NDA to speak out about a workplace sexual assault.</li><li>Nondisclosure agreements are often used to silence employees following claims of workplace abuse.</li></ul>By March of 2020, Ashley Kostial thought she'd been through the worst of it. She'd worked through months of intensive treatment for post-traumatic stress and was focused on managing her mental health and landing a new job.It had been nearly a year since Kostial reported being raped by a colleague during a work trip for a subsidiary of the global enterprise software firm, SAP. She'd met him for the first time in May 2019, when she was an account manager, as they prepared for a sales meeting in Plano, Texas. Afterward, they got drinks at the Marriott hotel bar. The last thing Kostial remembered from that night, she later told a police detective, was getting into the elevator with him.Her account of what happened next is based on interviews, a forensic exam, and a police report.The next morning, Kostial woke up in a panic, fearing she'd missed her flight, only to find scratches on her body and her bra and underwear ripped. Disoriented, she walked into the bathroom and saw her colleague's credit card on the white shag carpet. She looked at her phone and realized that around 2 a.m., she'd called her then-girlfriend repeatedly, in what dawned on her were frantic cries for help.Only later, after rushing to the airport, did another memory come back, she told police: her colleague on top of her on the hotel bed.Surveillance footage showed her exiting the hotel elevator with her colleague that night; a rape exam conducted after she flew back home documented bruising on her shoulder, arm, and thigh, and abrasions on her pelvis.Kostial recounted what she could piece together about that night to police in Plano, where the incident took place, and in Phoenix, where she lived. She cooperated with an HR investigation by SAP. All that was left was to sit through a grueling all-day mediation to reach a settlement agreement that would both end her employment with Ariba, the SAP subsidiary, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-tech-workers-nda-culture-silence-2021-7?r=tsr">gag her from ever speaking about</a> the most traumatic day of her life.That's when the men with cameras started showing up. Men, parked outside of her house, who she came to suspect were representatives of her employer-sponsored disability insurance provider, Aetna.Unable to work and consumed by her recovery, Kostial had filed for long-term disability care as she grappled with symptoms of PTSD that her psychologist attributed to the sexual assault. In a letter to Aetna, her psychologist had written that Kostial was experiencing insomnia, depression, emotional turmoil, dissociation, and intrusive thoughts, and she had been unable to return to work "due to clinically significant symptoms and major impairment to occupational and social functioning."Aetna denied her claim.It was in March 2020, after Kostial fought back, appealing Aetna's decision, that the men showed up. Kostial would spot them, or her security camera would, so often that she began to wonder whether she could take her dog for a walk without being followed. Her attorney, Brad Schleier, would later tell her it wasn't unusual for insurance companies to monitor people appealing denials. (Schleier declined to comment.)"It was harder than the initial assault," Kostial said of being stalked. She started carrying a knife.The men only disappeared after Aetna denied her appeal. In a lengthy phone call with Aetna, her psychologist described the details of her assault and the array of trauma symptoms that still persisted. But Aetna's representative was not swayed."Psychological complaints themselves are not sufficient in determining functional impairment," she wrote. A week later, in April 2020, Aetna issued its formal denial.Kostial turned to an option of last resort, hiring Schleier to file a lawsuit alleging she'd been wrongfully denied coverage.By the time Schleier called her with Aetna's settlement offer, in June 2021, she hadn't received a paycheck from SAP in almost two years. She was exhausted and broke, facing mounting medical bills. The offer, after attorney's fees, amounted to just a few months of her old salary — and it came with another non-disclosure agreement. Read more:<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-tech-workers-nda-culture-silence-2021-7?r=tsr">How tech giants use NDAs to create a culture of silence in Silicon Valley</a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-sec-response-under-scrutiny-after-whistleblower-comes-forward">Apple agrees to "make improvements" to its NDAs after whistleblower comes forward</a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/six-things-nda-contract-look-for-tech-job-2021-7">These are the 6 most important things to watch out for when you sign an NDA</a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flight-attendant-who-accused-elon-musk-of-sexual-misconduct-2022-5">A SpaceX flight attendant said Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex. The company paid $250,000 for her silence.</a> Like so many in her situation, Kostial took the money and signed.The pair of NDAs weighed heavily on her. Her agreement with SAP specified damages of up to $20,000 "for each occurrence of a breach of this confidentiality provision," a terrifying prospect while she was out of work. The NDA with Aetna allowed the insurer to claw back the settlement money she needed to pay her mortgage, and it didn't cap the amount of additional damages the firm could seek if she broke it."It feels like you're wearing this bomb that's strapped to you, which could detonate at any time if you speak up," she said.<h2 id="fc6197bc-a2e3-4f69-a6a4-835265ec33ad">An effort to hide insurance settlements</h2>NDAs have become ubiquitous in the workplace. The secrecy pacts, originally designed to protect sensitive intellectual property from being shared, are also used by companies to silence employees following allegations of sexual harassment, racial discrimination, and other workplace misconduct.When Kostial entered into one with Aetna, she became one of an untold number of Americans who have agreed to NDAs in another context altogether: to hide settlement terms with an insurance provider in the wake of a coverage dispute.The Aetna NDA only silenced her about the terms of her settlement, not the sexual assault. She remembers being stunned that she would have to sign a second NDA.<div type="image" title="Settlement agreement" height="2668" width="4000" msid="111258868" hostid="261" sizebytes="127992"></div>Initially, Kostial planned to return to her job at SAP once she was cleared to work again. Before the assault, she had loved working for the company, she said, and envisioned a long career with the firm. But then SAP's HR officer alerted Kostial to the results of the firm's investigation. SAP found that her colleague's conduct was "contrary" to company policy and that he "exhibited poor judgment," an email message shows, yet he would be allowed to continue working for SAP."That's when I knew that I couldn't work there anymore," Kostial said.SAP and Aetna, through spokespeople, declined to comment on Kostial's case or answer questions about their use of NDAs, such as whether they remain standard practice today.BI <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-tech-workers-nda-culture-silence-2021-7?r=tsr">documented the spread of these enforced secrecy pacts</a> in the tech industry in 2021, finding that tech companies both large and small routinely deploy NDAs in all sorts of situations, from protecting intellectual property to restricting discussion of workplace misconduct. BI reported Kostial's story then but referred to her by a pseudonym, Kira. She's decided to risk coming forward now because she views the NDAs she signed as unjust — and would like to see the use of NDAs ended for other victims of sexual assault.At BI's request, seven employment attorneys and scholars reviewed Kostial's settlement with Aetna. Several said that while it's common for health insurance firms to include NDAs in settlement agreements as a way to maintain negotiating leverage with other insured members, there is no way to know exactly how many are reached. That's because most NDAs are subject to mandatory arbitration, a private process that creates minimal publicly available records."Disability insurance has a lot of leverage in these situations. The insured typically doesn't have any income," said Nina Wasow, an attorney in Berkeley, California, who often represents clients with disability claims. "It's in their best interest not to have people be well-informed about what the marketplace is for the disability settlements. They don't want people talking about how crappy they are."Collecting data on the prevalence of NDAs is nearly impossible, legal experts said, as companies can use multiple statutes to go after breaches and the vast majority of individuals who sign such agreements never disclose them publicly.<h2 id="031c1406-731b-439f-b904-72fab3adcf31">A lack of data on the spread of NDAs</h2>Even as NDAs have spread into more and more sectors, how often they're enforced has remained a mystery. In 2022, Congress passed the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ224/PLAW-117publ224.pdf">Speak Out Act</a>, which bans the use of NDAs to gag victims of sexual abuse that were signed before the dispute arises, typically in employment agreements completed on the first day of an employee's new job. But the law doesn't prevent NDAs in settlements reached after the fact, such as the one Kostial signed.Judges in California and New York have historically refused to enforce NDAs, legal scholars said. New state laws in Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and elsewhere have further limited their use in settlements where sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace was alleged, based on where the employee lives. But Arizona, where Kostial was living at the time she was assaulted, doesn't prohibit NDAs in workplace settlements."Under some state laws, her employer would not be able to enforce an NDA against her for speaking out about this situation," said Jodi Short, a law professor at University of California College of the Law, San Francisco who has studied NDAs. "It seems odd that an insurer would be able to."While the National Labor Relations Board keeps statistics on complaints related to noncompete agreements, the agency doesn't track how often companies pursue employees for violating the terms of an NDA. In a sample of more than 100 state and federal court records containing the words "nondisclosure" and "sexual harassment" reviewed by BI, none had to do with the enforcement of NDAs.Several experts who study NDAs, including Evan Starr of the University of Maryland's business school, who co-authored a <a target="_blank" href="https://digital.sandiego.edu/law_fac_works/112/">2022 white paper </a>examining the spread of NDAs in the workplace, told BI that their primary purpose is to intimidate signatories from speaking publicly about something that could embarrass the company.Kostial experienced a form of this intimidation recently.Soon after BI sought comment on her case from Aetna, an email from Schleier, the lawyer who previously represented her, landed in her inbox. Aetna's attorneys "wanted me to contact you and remind you of the confidentiality obligation in the agreement," Schleier wrote. "Look forward to hearing back from you."<div type="image" title="A woman with long brown hair sits on a porch with her dog" height="2668" width="4000" msid="111258860" hostid="261" sizebytes="290176"></div>After Kostial settled her case against Aetna, she began to pick up the pieces of her life. She spent nearly a year applying for jobs and landed several first-round interviews. But she was often stymied during those conversations, she said, when questions would come up about her previous employer."I couldn't answer the questions," Kostial recalled. Anything she said, she feared, would risk breaking the terms of her first NDA. "SAP always loomed large in the back of my mind."Many other tech workers bound by NDAs <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-nondisclosure-agreements-silence-control-workers-silicon-valley-2021-7">told BI</a> that the agreements posed similar obstacles to a new job search.Eventually, in 2021, Kostial landed a job at a small Oakland-based software company working in data analytics, where she remained for nearly three years.She often finds herself thinking back to the chain of events that led her to this point. Especially galling was the wall of disbelief Kostial encountered, from HR officials to police.SAP's HR team seemingly gave credence to the claim by her alleged attacker that the two had consensual sex, ignoring Kostial's bruises and scrapes that were documented during her rape exam — and the fact that she is gay. In an email to Kostial, the detective assigned to her case from the Plano Police Department in Texas said of her alleged attacker, "I am not able to prove any part of his story that night was a lie." (No criminal charges were filed against Kostial's colleague and Plano police closed their investigation a month after the alleged assault.)Kostial has discussed her situation with Vincent White, a New York city-based lawyer who specializes in workplace NDAs and advises signatories on the risks associated with breaking them. Kostial said that whenever she has brought up wanting to speak out about her agreement, White has reminded her that doing so could entail "inflicting self-harm," whether by triggering attempts by SAP or Aetna to claw back her settlement monies or by effectively blacklisting herself from future work in the tech industry.Kostial's journey has led her to meet with lawmakers in Arizona and advocates in Illinois. She's participated in an <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cantbuymysilence.com/testimonies-1/story-5">international advocacy campaign</a>, Can't Buy My Silence, led by Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Harvey Weinstein's, and legal scholar Julie Macfarlane, to bring awareness to how NDAs are used to silence victims of assault and harassment. She's also developing an app, called Face Uncomfortable, to help employees report instances of workplace misconduct and save documentation.Kostial recently left her software job to focus on preventing other workers from being silenced by the kinds of secrecy pacts that have shaped her life. Though she's long been engaged, the couple have put off marriage. Kostial is fearful that if they wed, her wife's finances could be affected if either SAP or Aetna pursues her for breaking her NDA.Whenever she's seized by anxiety, Kostial reminds herself of how hard she's fought to move past the sexual assault and why she's coming forward."There's nothing that could happen after this that would be worse than what I've already been through," she said. "I hope that if there's one person who needs to hear this, they will."Just two weeks ago, Kostial received another email from her former lawyer."Hey Ashley — Just following up," he wrote. He said he'd received another message from Aetna, reminding him about her NDA.Kostial never replied.

An SAP employee reported a workplace sexual assault. Now she's breaking her NDA.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Michael Doolin was an HR director for British Airways and PwC before starting his own HR business. </li><li>Doolin shares the biggest changes he's seen in the workplace after over three decades in HR.</li></ul>This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Michael Doolin, CEO of Clover HR and former human resources director at PwC, British Airways, and DPD in Ireland. The following has been edited for length and clarity.Employees expect more from their employers today. I think that's because the world expects more from people than ever before.In my father's generation of the 1950s and 60s, a sense of gratitude and subservience was culturally prevalent. People were pleased to have a job and were often there for life.My generation of the 1980s was grateful for our jobs and believed that if you worked hard, you'd get on.My daughters are both in their mid-20s. Their generation knows that they need to work hard to progress, but their employer also needs to work hard for them to stay.The younger generation wants to work in a place that gives back to society, does the right thing in the right ways, and treats staff well. They will not tolerate chauvinism, sexism, unfairness, or bias — and quite rightly. They expect more than my generation and certainly more than my parents' generation.The generation under 35 is not prepared to tolerate a lack of opportunity as much as my generation. Individuals want to grow, to add value, and to be recognized.At an accountancy firm where I worked, they would refer to their fresh intake of college graduates as "the L'Oreal generation" because "they're worth it." My daughters' generation believes that they are worth it. That's a great thing, particularly for young women.<h2 id="b09f8741-26c0-4d8f-99fe-30fdc78187a9">Workplaces have become more accepting</h2>Employees' growing expectations push change because employers, caught in the so-called "war for talent," need to meet them to retain their workforce.Workplaces have become more accepting. People of all backgrounds, creeds, nationalities, genders, and sexual orientations are embraced more than ever before. When I started working, an employer openly supporting Pride was unheard of. Fortunately, that's no longer the case.This acceptance is reflected in companies' policies, while there's more open discussion around mental health and the importance of speaking up. There's a greater intolerance for poor practice, a desire to get it right, and more investment in training, support, coaching, and mentoring. It reflects a wider shift in society.I used to work in finance in London, "the City," in the late 80s and early 90s. It wasn't a million miles away from <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/wolf-of-wall-street-review-2013-12">"The Wolf of Wall Street."</a>I swore blind to myself that my daughters would not walk into a workplace with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/19/has-the-sun-axed-page-3-topless-pictures">Page 3 calendars</a> on the notice board, where men openly discuss their lewd behavior. There has been some progress.There are still strands of that behavior that exist in certain sectors. There is still a male hierarchy in banking, insurance, financial services, and many other industries. There is still an institutionalized bias against women or people of different ethnic backgrounds. You only have to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/pushy-solicitor-wins-unfair-dismissal-tribunal/">look at employment tribunal hearings to see that </a>— and that's the stuff that's public.<h2 id="f82ec925-88ba-4bb3-ac46-fcbf663452ff">Employees are in danger of losing relationship-building skills at work</h2>As technology has developed, I think digital skills have been prioritized over more traditional social and relationship-building skills. We've denied younger generations the benefits of socialization in the workplace.Increased hybrid and remote working since the pandemic has mainly had a positive effect, but I do think the negative consequences are often underestimated, both from a mental health and productivity perspective. Management and measurement at work are still necessary, and hybrid working does not allow for that in the same way.The benefits of being in a physical workplace environment are huge. Hybrid working can negate some of the advantages of coming together. This needs to be managed by having more of a return to the previous work environment and with more collaborative working arrangements.<h2 id="f849a1df-ed88-4728-a70a-dc5c8eef89a0">Employees have a healthier work-life balance</h2>Younger generations expect not to work beyond their contracted hours and expect to be rewarded well. The ability to set boundaries is absolutely a good thing. I think it promotes more efficient and smarter ways of working. But at the same time, I think it needs to be managed.In my dinosaur view, I think the dial has gone too far in favor of employees. Most of us signed contracts to work in an office, Monday to Friday. Employees who are unhappy about <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nothing-smartphone-maker-staff-return-to-the-office-full-time-2024-8">returning to the workplace</a> should be tackled quite strongly, I believe. When you cross the white line at a golf club, you're asked to play by the rules of that golf club. The needs and interests of the business should be of equal concern to those of the employees.I don't know what the future of the workplace will look like. I'd like to think that younger generations will continue refusing to accept poor practices and demanding better. I'm hopeful that their workplaces will be better.

I've worked in HR for 36 years. Here are the 3 biggest changes I've seen in the workplace — and why I think the dial has swung too far in employees' favor. 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Florida senate passed a bill that would make it harder for public sector unions to collect dues and recertify.</li><li>Police and firefighters' unions are exempt from the anti-union provisions.</li></ul>Florida Republicans aren't cracking down on all unions — just the ones that vote for Democrats.<a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/256/BillText/e2/PDF" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A new bill</a> originally <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-takes-aim-at-teachers-unions-in-latest-education-plan-2022-12">proposed</a> by Gov. Ron DeSantis and now passed by the Sunshine State's GOP-led Senate would make it harder for teachers to form a union without enough dues-paying members. While it will impact Democratic-leaning teachers' unions, along with most other public-sector unions, Republican-supporting police and firefighters' unions will be exempt. The main provisions would prevent public employees from paying their dues as salary deductions — the primary way workers pay their dues — and would raise the threshold of dues-paying members needed to avoid union decertification from 50% to 60%. Decertification would mean employees would have to petition for a union again, and the state would have to conduct an election.Importantly, the bill doesn't apply to police or firefighters' unions, which <a href="https://floridafop.com/">endorsed</a> DeSantis in his 2022 reelection. Only teachers, bus drivers, janitors, and other public employees will be subject to the anti-union measures.The bill comes after DeSantis signed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-universal-school-choice-vouchers-florida-defund-woke-public-schools-2023-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">universal school vouchers</a> into law, which would divert funding from cash-strapped public schools to private ones. And teachers' unions, which have been one of the governor's biggest foes since they <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-teachers-union-dont-want-to-be-the-petri-dish-2020-7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sued</a> the state for reopening schools during the pandemic, say that the bill is political retribution."This is retaliation by the governor against people who he thinks get in his way," Andrew Spar, the president of the Florida Education Association, told Insider. FEA is the largest teachers union in the state with over 150,000 members. "The governor has a vendetta against teachers, staff, professors, and other public employees," Spar said, even though 30% of FEA's members are registered Republicans.Police and firefighters "tended to support his campaign, so they're not going to be included in the bill," he explained. Though DeSantis announced the main provisions of the bill in <a href="https://www.flgov.com/2023/01/23/governor-ron-desantis-announces-unprecedented-legislation-to-empower-educators-protect-teachers-from-overreaching-school-unions-and-raise-teacher-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">January</a>, his office did not comment on whether he supports the bill's current exemptions for police and firefighters' unions. The governor "will decide on the bill's merits in its final form if and when it passes and is delivered to the governor's office," a spokesperson said.The Republican offices of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and the bill's sponsor, Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, did not immediately reply when asked to comment.But Spar said, "Everything we hear: the governor's office wrote this bill."<h2>The bill would cost teachers' unions and could bankrupt them</h2>The Sunshine State has never been friendly to unions. In 1943, Florida became the first "<a href="https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/right-to-work-resources" target="_blank" rel="noopener">right-to-work</a>" state where workers can't be forced to pay union dues or fees, even if they benefit from union contracts. In 2018, the <a href="https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=62784&amp;SessionId=86" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Republican legislature</a> made it easier to decertify a union if eligible public employees paying dues fell below 50%.DeSantis has framed his latest actions as "<a href="https://www.flgov.com/2023/01/23/governor-ron-desantis-announces-unprecedented-legislation-to-empower-educators-protect-teachers-from-overreaching-school-unions-and-raise-teacher-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paycheck protection</a>" for teachers."It's more of a guarantee that the money is actually going to go to teachers," he said at a school board retreat in 2022, "and not be frittered away by interest groups who get involved in the school system," according to Insider's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-takes-aim-at-teachers-unions-in-latest-education-plan-2022-12">Kimberly Leonard</a>.But Spar disagrees. "This is not about empowering public employees. This is about killing off the ability, the constitutional right, to come together in a union," he said. By making it harder for public employees to pay their union dues, the law makes it harder for teachers' unions to reach the new 60% threshold and recertify."The governor's staff apparently called around to see the membership of public unions, specifically teachers," Spar said.Since most of their local unions get dues from 50-60% of those eligible in their bargaining unit, the 60% threshold would mean union decertification, he explained. Teachers would then have to petition for recertification, and the Public Employees Relations Commission would have to conduct an election on the union's and taxpayer's dime, he said."It's requiring every year for locals that don't get to 60% to go through that process, which is time, money that will have to pay for all of that, and taxpayer money," Spar said.The state Senate's analysis estimated the bill would cost <a href="https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/256/Analyses/2023s00256.fp.PDF" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$900,000</a> each year for implementation."We think that's a low number," Spar said.Of the 100 local teachers unions Spar represents, 70-75 of those locals would need to hold an election to recertify, he said. That's just a fraction of the 150-200 of the state's 300 public-sector unions he expected would be decertified.These smaller teachers' unions, especially the rural ones, can't afford an election every year, Spar said. Many only have revenues of a few thousand dollars.Combined with a provision that would require local unions to hire a certified public accountant to audit their revenues annually, Spar said the bill is "meant to bankrupt those unions."

Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP want to make it harder for public-sector unions to collect dues — with exceptions for police and firemen

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Oxfam said in a new report that Amazon and Walmart use excessive surveillance in their warehouses.</li><li>The "concerning" practice puts warehouse employees' health and well-being in jeopardy, the report says. </li></ul><a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/amazon">Amazon</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/walmart">Walmart</a> both use over-the-top surveillance in their warehouses — and the "concerning" practice not only undermines the rights of the megacorporations' massive amount of employees, but puts their health and well-being in jeopardy, international anti-poverty organization <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/food-energy-billionaires-richer-covid-ukraine-war-inflation-oxfam-inequality-2022-5">Oxfam</a> said in a new report.The 52-page report, "At Work and Under Watch: Surveillance and Suffering at Amazon and Walmart Warehouses,"<a target="_blank" href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/research-publications/at-work-and-under-watch/"> was released Wednesday </a>and highlights survey data it says was collected from 1,484 Amazon warehouse employees and 444 Walmart warehouse workers across the United States.Amazon currently has 750,000 operations employees working in warehouses throughout the country, the company said. Walmart employs roughly 1.6 million associates in the US, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Tens of thousands of those workers are employed across Walmart's more than 200 US distribution centers.Oxfam's report quotes several unidentified warehouse workers for the retail giants describing harsh labor conditions, including one Amazon worker who likened their experiences on the warehouse floor to "slavery.""Amazon has been a pioneer in the area of worker surveillance and management in its warehouses, and Walmart, long known for adopting repressive practices to monitor workers, is also entering a new phase of accelerated technology deployment across its facilities," the report says.Data from two recent surveys, funded in part by Oxfam — the National Survey of Amazon Warehouse Workers and the National Survey of Walmart Warehouse Workers — is included in the report. The results show that a substantial amount of Amazon and Walmart warehouse employees surveyed reported being closely watched by technology while in the workplace."As the data shows, although key differences exist, workers at both Amazon and Walmart are experiencing concerning levels of surveillance," the report says. "Crucially, excessive surveillance is not simply disconcerting for workers; it also erodes worker rights."<div type="image" title="Amazon packages on a conveyor belt." height="3864" width="5500" msid="109181871" hostid="261" sizebytes="925948"></div><h2>Amazon and Walmart slammed Oxfam's report</h2>Amazon has disputed claims that it uses technology to monitor its warehouse workers, while Walmart said the report fails to accurately depict the company's use of technology."While we respect Oxfam and its mission, we have strong disagreements with the characterizations and conclusions made throughout this paper — many based on flawed methodology and hyperbolic anecdotes," Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel told Business Insider in a statement. "In reality, Amazon has made notable safety gains and enriched the communities in which we operate, providing safe, good paying jobs with health benefits and educational opportunities."Vogel went on to attack the research itself."Traditionally, researchers work to disprove pre-existing beliefs and biases, but the organizations involved in this paper did the opposite — they started with biases and sought to prove them — which is disappointing," Vogel said. "We're not perfect, but we're making measurable progress and our employees' health, safety, and well-being will always be our top priority." A Walmart spokesperson told BI in a statement: "Oxfam's claims are based on incomplete and misleading information. This report inaccurately represents Walmart's use of technology and Walmart's publicly available disclosures around data privacy and worker safety."According to the data outlined in the Oxfam report, 77% of Amazon warehouse workers surveyed and 62% of Walmart warehouse employees who participated reported that "technology can tell" if they are "actively engaged" in their work almost or most of the time.Similarly, 72% of Amazon warehouse employees who participated and 67% of Walmart warehouse employees surveyed reported that "how fast" they work is measured by company technology always or most of the time, the data in the report shows.In a seven-page response to Oxfam viewed by BI, Tessie Petion, the head of ESG Engagement at Amazon, wrote that Oxfam's report "illustrates a misunderstanding of what the technology in our facilities does and doesn't do.""We do use technology in our facilities to help ensure the safety and security of our employees — it would be irresponsible if we did not take this approach. We also secure our inventory. Our facilities house hundreds of thousands of products that will be shipped to customers around the world, and the technology in our facilities helps guide the flow of goods through the sites," Petion wrote.Petion continued, "This is similar to technology used throughout the industry. We do not use the camera technology in our warehouses to monitor employees. Employees who have questions about how our technology works, or concerns about the data it collects, are always encouraged to speak to their manager who can explain it to them in greater detail."<div type="image" title="Walmart warehouse" height="667" width="1000" msid="109181876" hostid="261" sizebytes="129358"></div><h2>More than half of Amazon and Walmart employees surveyed find it tough to get to the bathroom</h2>According to data in Oxfam's report, roughly three-quarters of both Amazon and Walmart warehouse workers surveyed reported feeling pressure to work faster at least some of the time."Being monitored this minutely takes a physical and mental toll as workers need to make decisions about taking breaks, eating, going to the bathroom, or even drinking water with their pace or performance metrics in mind," the report says.Some 54% of Amazon respondents and 57% of Walmart respondents reported that their production rate makes it hard for them to use the bathroom at least some of the time, data included in the report said."The conditions there are absolutely horrific," one Amazon warehouse worker in Alabama was quoted as saying in the report. "I likened it to slavery, because they care more about quotas and meeting production rates than actually caring about us as human beings inside there. I feel more like a number."Petion, in her response to Oxfam, called the assertion that workers don't get sufficient breaks "wrong.""In addition to their regularly scheduled breaks, employees are free to take informal breaks throughout their shifts to use the restroom, get water, or talk to a manager or HR," Petion wrote. "If there's ever a concern about a manager misusing productivity guidance or asking employees to prioritize productivity over safety, we immediately investigate and take appropriate action."<h2>The data shows a move towards a 'really dystopian workplace,' Oxfam director says</h2>Irit Tamir, the director of Oxfam America's private sector department, told BI that the research outlined in the report shows a move towards a "really dystopian workplace where people feel like they're constantly being monitored and watched.""They are feeling oppressed by this cognitive tax on workers who fear this constant surveillance and punishment" for taking breaks, Tamir said. "And as a result, you know, I think these warehouse floors have become <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/warehouse-injuries-amazon-chronic-pain-speed-risk-productivity-targets-employees-2022-10">incubators of injury</a> sustained by automation and surveillance, and workplace cultures of intimidation."The Oxfam report says that at Amazon, warehouse workers "are assigned handheld devices or scanners that record, count, and measure every item they move during their day.""These systems measure down to the second the amount of time a worker spends not actively sorting, packing, or performing work — what is called 'time off task,'" the report says. Those scanners, according to the report, "play a key role in the surveillance machine" because it says it can lead to automated penalties for workers who fail to meet production targets."In addition, hundreds of security cameras are constantly monitoring the warehouse floor, ready to notify a manager when a worker is away from their station for too long," the report says.<div type="image" title="walmart warehouse" height="564" width="842" msid="109181879" hostid="261" sizebytes="75346"></div>When it comes to Walmart, the report says that "little is known about the technology the company is currently using to monitor workers across its warehouses," but states that workers it surveyed reported being "watched constantly."The report says that the data from the Walmart warehouse worker survey analyzed in the report is the "first of its kind to offer insights into the extent of worker monitoring at Walmart's warehousing facilities, and it captures vital information about the company's current practices."One Walmart worker quoted in the Oxfam report alleged that the company's warehouse robots "are treated better than human beings."In a statement, Abby Maxman, the president and CEO of Oxfam America, accused Amazon and Walmart of "making record profits on the backs of warehouse workers by exploiting them through oppressive surveillance practices."Oxfam is calling upon both Walmart and Amazon to commit to "ceasing or significantly reforming their use of worker surveillance technologies to enforce unreasonable and/or unsafe quotas.""These are the two biggest private employers in the United States," Tamir told BI of Amazon and Walmart. "So we are talking impact across millions of workers."

Amazon and Walmart warehouse employees are so surveilled that they're worried about breaking to use bathroom: Oxfam report

<ul><li>A 15% wage hike for <keyword id="2625731" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Public-Sector-bank-employees">public sector bank employees</keyword> will only result in a ₹1,100 increase in actual salary. </li><li>Most of the increase in basic pay is what employees’ are already receiving as a part of their dearness allowance. </li><li>In a letter to members, general secretary of AINBOF and AIBOC unions GB Manimaran makes the case of keeping non-financial negotiations separate from salary negotiations. </li></ul>Public sector bank employees have been fighting for a wage hike that has been due since 2017. However, negotiations are still ongoing and the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/three-years-and-five-strikes-later-wage-revision-for-public-sector-bank-employees-at-par-with-2012/articleshow/74433402.cms">increase in salary of 15%</a> isn’t as large as it seems. In an appeal to negotiators and members, GB Manimaran — the general secretary of the Canara Bank Officers’ Association AINBOF and AIBOC — point out the proposed wage revision only means an increase of ₹900 to ₹1,100 in takehome salary. “Such an increase in salary would put bank officers in much lower scale compared to the Grade A officers of the Central Government or any public sector undertaking,” he said in his 20-page letter, seen by Business Insider. <div type="image" title="PSUwage_edited" msid="74650936" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The real increase in wages for bank employees will only be around Rs 900 to Rs 1100&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

 Even though basic pay will increase by 15% on paper, most of it will go into what bankers are already earning as a dearness allowance, since it comes with 2% load in basic pay. Earlier this month, public sector bank employees called off the three-day strike that would have led to banks <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/banks-will-be-shut-for-six-days-next-month-as-employees-protest-half-wages/articleshow/74112660.cms">shutting down for six days</a> when the Indian Bankers’ Association (IBA) revised the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/three-years-and-five-strikes-later-wage-revision-for-public-sector-bank-employees-at-par-with-2012/articleshow/74433402.cms">wage hike from 12.5% to 15%.</a> The unions’ original demand was for 20%. The case for keeping salary negotiations separate Manimaran appeals that non-financial issues should not be a part of salary negotiations since they can affect the unions’ bargaining power. “If we are made to sacrifice on the financial part to achieve the demand of 5-day banking — it does not spell success in achieving our demand,” he wrote. Similarly, the value of being able to encash five days of leave and family pensions also distract from the issues, according to Manimaran. The government’s attempt to link performance to wages also has its pitfalls since a lot of factors that are out of the control of employees, as per the letter viewed by them. The opportunity cost of compromising on wage hike The terms of wage hike negotiations between the government and public sector bank employees don’t meet all the core demands of the banking unions. According to Manimaran, the wage hike doesn’t adhere to the mini minimum wages principles — set forth by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) — which were adopted by the central government when it implemented the 7th central pay commission. The terms also don’t account for a running pay scale without any stagnation. This means that the next time bankers want an increase in salary, they will have to go through another round of negotiations — which takes time. The current negotiations have been going since November 2017 for the last three years. In a case filed by an employee of Canara Bank, the <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/madurai/pil-seeks-psu-bank-officers-pay-to-be-same-as-group-a-officers/articleshow/66685569.cms">Madurai High Court</a> told the central government to give the IBA directions on how to negotiate with the bankers. No formula has been presented by the government to date. Meanwhile, the IBA submitted a counter-petition to the High Court saying that it’s not a statutory body. So, as per law, it has no power to agree or enter into an agreement with the trade unions on wage revision. Despite these claims, the IBA is scheduled to sit down with the unions today, March 16, to discuss the revision of pensions for banking employees. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/three-years-and-five-strikes-later-wage-revision-for-public-sector-bank-employees-at-par-with-2012/articleshow/74433402.cms">Three years and five strikes later, wage revision for public sector bank employees at par with 2012</a>

The government’s 15% wage hike for public sector bankers will just add ₹1,100 to their salary

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Employers are pressuring staff to keep working even when positive for <keyword id="11893994" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="covid-19" source="Orion">COVID-19</keyword>. </li><li>One woman said she was "devastated" to be expected at work after a miscarriage and COVID-19. </li></ul>"We were literally told by management that unless we're dead, we have to come to work. Showing any signs or symptoms of COVID-19 was not enough to justify staying at home and being safe" is how one <keyword id="11893588" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="retail" source="Orion">retail</keyword> worker described their employer's attitude to the pandemic to <a href="https://shift.hks.harvard.edu/">The Shift Project.</a> Based at Harvard University's Kennedy School, The Shift Project gathers data about working conditions for the approximately 25 million people employed in the US service sector.As of January 28, more than 878,000 COVID-19-related deaths have been reported in the US since the pandemic began, according to<a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/region/united-states"> John Hopkins University data.</a> But even before the COVID-19 crisis hit, workers in the service industry were already in a "<a href="https://shift.hks.harvard.edu/essential-and-vulnerable-service-sector-workers-and-paid-sick-leave/">precarious position,"</a> toiling for low pay and living paycheck to paycheck, without the safety net of sick pay if they became ill. <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm#ncs_nb_table6.f.2">According to Bureau of Labor data</a>, 41% of service-sector <keyword id="6357081" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="employees" source="Orion">employees</keyword> are denied sick pay. Sick pay is essential to ensure people can work safely, Professor Kristen Harknett, cofounder of The Shift Project and an associate professor of sociology at the University of California San Francisco, told Insider."The lack of paid sick leave and the profound level of economic insecurity, that is just kind of the status quo for most of this workforce. That means that if you skip work, you're foregoing pay at a minimum, and jeopardizing your job, potentially, as well," Harknett said. <h2>Forced to work with COVID-19 and after a miscarriage</h2>An employee who works as a medication dispenser at a large pharmacy chain, who asked not to be identified for fear of losing their job, told Insider that she tested positive for COVID-19 and had a miscarriage around the same time. Her manager was unsympathetic, insisting that she come to work because no one could cover her shift. After threatening to resign, she was allowed to take unpaid sick leave."Devastated doesn't even sum up how I felt. I thought I was working with a company that cared about 'health,' as they promote it in their logos and advertising," she said.<div type="image" title="A woman clutches her stomach" height="1993" width="2658" msid="89227677" hostid="261"></div>"My body is going through a miscarriage and COVID-19 and somehow that didn't matter," she continued. "It was more important to them that someone would cover my closing shift. Emotionally and physically I was not OK."The employee cares for her two-year-old and works part-time. Her husband works full time but isn't able to work from home. "I was not asking for any special treatment. I just wanted some empathy to get some time to be able to heal and be in a better state of mind," she said.A Shift Project survey of 6,600 hourly workers, polled from September to November 2021, found that nearly two-thirds of workers who reported being sick said they worked through the illness. People cited money worries as the top reason they worked while sick, followed by not wanting to let down coworkers and fear of reprisal, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/reviews/out?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fas-inflation-rises-cost-of-living-raises-gain-popularity-11640092736%3Fmod%3Darticle_inline">the Wall Street Journal reported.</a>A night auditor at a hotel in Flint, Michigan, told Insider that he was forced to go into work while he was still positive for COVID-19, and said his employer had "given up" on COVID-19 safety protocols for staff.<div type="image" title="Hotel reception wearing covid-19 facemask" height="3891" width="7783" msid="89227678" hostid="261"></div>The employee said he came in early one day to take over a shift from a colleague who believed they had COVID-19. While they both wore masks and were "careful," he believes he had already caught the virus from his coworker but had not started presenting symptoms. Two days after being in contact with his positive colleague, he tested positive. His employer told him to come back after just five days, even though he still tested positive for the virus. The manager told him there simply weren't enough workers to cover shifts if people were out sick. "There is a giant reality that employers are intentionally understaffed because they're trying to minimize <keyword id="11910050" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="labor" source="Orion">labor</keyword> costs. There isn't a norm of having sufficient staffing," Harknett said.A court case in California recently took up the issue of a company prioritizing the interests of the business over workers' health and found in favor of the employee. A California Court of Appeals ruled in January that Matilde Ek and her three daughters could sue her employer, See's Candies, for damages when she contracted COVID-19 because the company failed to ensure safety in the workplace, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/employer-must-face-workers-lawsuit-over-husbands-covid-death-california-court-2021-12-21/">Reuters reported.</a>Ek's husband, Arturo, 72, subsequently caught the virus and died. Ek, who worked at a packing plant in Carson, California, claimed that plant employees complained to supervisors about the conditions, as did the employees' union, according to <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/1341391/see-s-candies-worker-sues-over-husband-s-covid-19-death" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener">Law 360</a>."Defendants knew and should have known that their failure to take appropriate and necessary mitigation measures would increase the known and foreseeable risk that their workers, like the plaintiff, would become infected in the course and scope of their work ... and carry said viral infection home, infecting one or more of their family members," the lawsuit read.<h2>The Great Resignation</h2>The Great Resignation has hit the US labor market as a byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic. Jerome Ternynck, the CEO of the hiring platform SmartRecruiters, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/great-resignation-what-to-know-who-is-quitting-2021-9?r=US&amp;IR=T">told Insider's Britney Nguyen</a> that "the pandemic has reset people's purpose in life," and they are no longer willing to put up with poor working conditions.<div type="image" title="Leisure and hospitality staff are some of the lowest paid workers in the country." height="1186" width="1582" msid="89227680" hostid="261"></div>In November 2021, the most recent month for which the <a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm">Bureau of Labor Statistics released data</a>, 4.5 million workers quit their jobs, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/record-high-restaurant-hotel-workers-quit-in-november-labor-shortage-2022-1">led by low-wage workers</a>, with a record-breaking 1 million leisure and hospitality workers leaving their jobs.Kevin Reuning, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University, believes that service-sector staff are often seen by employer as "replaceable" vessels for providing labor — not as people with vulnerabilities and responsibilities being forced to work through a dangerous global pandemic.Maribel Cornejo, a McDonald's worker and leader with the <a href="https://fightfor15.org/">Fight for $15</a> in Houston, is hoping this will change as the workplace evolves because of the pandemic. "It's time for employers to realize that it's frontline workers like us who keep the doors open," Cornejo <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/record-high-restaurant-hotel-workers-quit-in-november-labor-shortage-2022-1">told Insider</a>. "And if they want us to keep showing up they need to respect us, protect us, and pay us what we deserve."

In stores and restaurants, the staff serving the public may be ill with COVID-19 because their bosses want them to keep working, say employees

<ul><li>A top public sector bank has told its employees to no longer stock ₹2,000 notes in ATMs today onwards.</li><li>But customers need not panic as these banks are however told to accept ₹2,000 notes from individuals coming in to make a deposit. </li><li>According to an email accessed by Business Insider India, it also instructs senior management to no longer issue the denomination for withdrawals via cheque either. </li></ul>A top public sector bank’s employees were told by the senior management not to dole out ₹2,000 notes during bank withdrawals. They were also instructed to not stock the denomination at ATMs as well. As per an email viewed by Business Insider India, at least one public sector bank has issued instructions to senior management to keep ₹2,000 notes out of circulation. But customers need not panic as the bank employees were told to accept ₹2,000 notes from individuals making a deposit. The email states, “This will be formally communicated soon.” Sources at the bank — whose identity we confirmed, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly — said that after the directive was issued, senior officials called branch managers to confirm that it was being executed in the morning. They were told to ensure that only denominations of ₹500, ₹200 and ₹100 are loaded into ATMs. “The supply of ₹100 notes will be increased through currency chests for which a special drive is being undertaken,” said the email. However, it was also communicated that the written instruction was a mistake and was not supposed to be communicated as such — although the instruction to “restrict” the circulation of ₹2,000 banknotes nationwide, still stands. No explanation was given to explain the exercise was being undertaken. Business Insider has written to the RBI awaiting a response from the central bank. <div type="Article" hostid="261" msid="74061047" title="Exclusive: Bankers reveal why RBI is quietly rolling back the ₹2000 notes" mstype="2" mssubtype="0"></div>

 <keyword id="6355548" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Public-sector-banks">Public sector banks</keyword> across the board hold back ₹2,000 notes We at Business Insider tried to withdraw money from multiple public sector banks across the nation. We presented a cheque to the State Bank of India in New Delhi, the cashier told us that he was unable to issue ₹10,000 in ₹2,000 denominations because they only had one note left. Officials tell us that’s an improbable situation for a city branch, which deals in high traffic on a daily basis, to lack stock of any denomination. A Bank of Baroda ATM and a Canara Bank ATM in Mumbai only dispensed ₹500 notes while trying to withdraw ₹4,000 and ₹6,000 respectively. However, an Andhra Bank ATM did dispense ₹2,000 notes. A flood of fake notes The move comes less than a month after the National Criminal Records Bureau (<a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/so-easy-to-copy-rs-2-000-notes-make-56-of-all-seized-fake-currency-shows-ncrb-data-1636965-2020-01-15">NCRB</a>) data revealed that there was a flood of fake notes in the market after demonetisation. According to their data, 56% of all ₹2,000 notes seized from were fake. Two days ago, 13 individuals were <a href="https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/2020/feb/05/fake-currency-racket-busted-13-arrested-in-hyderabad-2099244.html">arrested in Hyderabad</a> in a fake currency racket where denominations of ₹500 and ₹2,000 were being printed on scanner-cum-colour printing machines. A task force seized currency notes with the face value of ₹17.7 lakh. The RBI isn’t printing anymore ₹2,000 notes In reply to a Right to Information (<a href="https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/rbi-stopped-printing-rs-2000-currency-notes-reveals-rti/story/384992.html">RTI</a>) query, the RBI said that the printing of ₹2,000 currency notes has been stopped altogether in October 2019. At the time, RBI did not issue a clarification for the measure but analysts said supply of high-denomination notes was being limited to keep people from hoarding them. They also pointed out that the optimal level of ₹2,000 notes has been reached — 31.2% in terms of value and 3% in terms of volume. In 2016-17, the RBI claimed that it printed 3,544.991 million notes. Next year, it printed 111.507 notes, which reduced further to 46.690 million notes in 2018-19. According to RBI data, there were 3,363 million notes in circulation at the end of March 2018. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/policy/economy/news/highlights-of-rbi-governor-shaktikanta-das-speech/articleshow/73977878.cms">'Don't discount the RBI' ⁠— that and other top highlights of RBI governor Shaktikanta Das speech</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/news/hike-in-deposit-insurance-wont-hit-bank-balance-sheets-rbi/articleshow/73980226.cms">Hike in deposit insurance won't hit bank balance sheets: RBI </a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/finance/news/bankers-reveal-why-rbi-is-quietly-rolling-back-the-2000-notes/articleshow/74061047.cms?src=hp_ts">Exclusive: Bankers reveal why RBI is quietly rolling back the ₹2000 notes</a>

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