The Black-White Wage Gap     Attribution: Current Population Survey - photo from Daily Kox, 1/28/17     David Leonhardt, writing in the June 25, 2020 NYT   One remarkable sign of the racial inequities plaguing the United States: The wage gap between black and white men is as large today as it was in 1950.   If you look at the government’s official wage statistics, you’ll see a somewhat different story. Those number show that the wage gap is smaller than in the mid-20th century.   But the official statistics are misleading. They exclude people who are not working — and there has been a sharp rise since the 1980s in...

The 10 Commitments Companies Must Make to Advance Racial Justice     Jorg Greuel/Getty Images     Mark R. Kramer, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and a cofounder and managing director of FSG, a global social impact consulting firm, recently penned an article for the Harvard Business Review (June 4, 2020). In it, he outlines 10 commitments companies must make to advance racial justice.   In the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many major corporations are tweeting out statements of concern and support for the Black community. That’s a start, but what is needed at this moment is action. We cannot pretend that most major...

H7877 will have a demonstratively chilling event on the Rhode Island staffing industry and Rhode Island businesses   Rhode Island sides with fourth-century emperor Constantine.   Constantine, ancient Rome’s first Christian emperor, issued an edict (AD 321) that all citizens must rest on Sunday. Over the next 1700 years (or so), restrictions regarding working on Sundays continued in a fairly haphazard manner. These “Sunday Laws”, often referred to as “blue laws”, were carried to the new world by Puritan colonies. The first mention of them is in Samuel Peter’s 1781 book “General History of Connecticut”.   Sunday Laws, or Blue Laws aside, in a modern, world-wide economy,...

Coronavirus in the Workplace   TDI; WORKERS COMP; UNEMPLOYMENT ELIGIBILITY   It is really difficult to keep track of what is happening. Conditions and situations are changing daily. The possibility of workplace closures, schools being shut down (which impacts the parents, and, subsequently, their workplace), and interruption of supply chains are all issues that every business now must take into consideration.   Here are just a few of the issues that employers may have to grapple with:   If an employee can't work because of illness, this makes them eligible for Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI). To qualify, they must be under the care of a physician. Should an employer...

The Rhode Island House of Representatives recently passed H. 7157 – Minimum Wages, which will increase the RI minimum wage to $11.50, effective October 1, 2020. The House bill mirrors the Senate version, which eliminates the need to schedule reconciliation talks. Since the Governor had similar minimum wage increase language in her budget, there would appear to be virtually no chance that the legislation will not pass.   The Rhode Island minimum wage has been raised 10 times since 2000, including, every year since 2013, with the exception of 2017. With talk, nationally (state by state), of a $15.00 per hour minimum wage,...