#benefits of workforce planning

[smartscaliing]

The Strategic Edge of HR Outsourcing: Benefits of Workforce Planning and Employee Management Services

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, companies are increasingly turning to HR outsourcing companies to manage their human resource needs. As organizations grow, the complexity of managing employees, handling workforce planning, and ensuring seamless employee management services can become overwhelming. HR outsourcing offers a strategic solution that not only streamlines processes but also fosters growth and enhances operational efficiency. This blog will explore the advantages of partnering with an HR outsourcing company, the critical benefits of workforce planning, and the role of employee management services in driving business success.

[aipuconnects]

Shaping the Future of Human Resource Leadership

The Global Council of HR Leaders (GCHR) serves as a platform for HR professionals worldwide to collaborate, share knowledge, and lead the evolution of human resource management and leadership.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Woodland Park Zoo is my home zoo, and the possibility of a strike has been brewing for a while. The staff at the zoo have been working without a union contract for over 200 days because the zoo is unwilling to pay them a living wage.

Zookeepers around the country are consistently underpaid, and Seattle is an incredibly expensive place to live. The zoo is losing animal care staff rapidly - I've been told they'd lost five keepers and a vet tech to another nearby AZA zoo this year alone - because they can't afford to live here. And I've been told that because there's no contract, the zoo is on a hiring freeze, which means they're perpetually understaffed.

Photo credit: Yulia Issa

There was an informational picket outside of a big event last month, which got a ton of community support. Then the only content the zoo put out for National Zookeepers Week was a single post about how much gratitude the staff are owed, which... hmmmm, came off a little tone-deaf in the current moment.

Now it looks like staff might end up striking to make their point, after almost a year of negotiations.

"Workers at Woodland Park Zoo, who are members of the Joint Crafts Council (JCC) Coalition of Unions, have been making plans to protect the animals if they go on strike. If the group of 200 workers is unable to reach an agreement with their employer over a new contract, they say they will run a skeleton crew that would provide necessary care to the animals but require the Zoo to close its doors to the general public. “We are making contingency plans to ensure the continued well-being of the animals if we are forced to strike,” said Janel Kempf, a learning coordinator who has been with the Zoo for 25 years and is a Shop Steward with Teamsters 117. “A strike is an absolute last resort and one that none of us takes lightly, but the Zoo keeps pushing us in that direction. If the Zoo doesn’t change course soon, we will have no other choice than to withhold our labor.” Negotiations between the Coalition of Unions and the Zoo have been ongoing for the last ten months with workers growing increasingly frustrated at what they say is the Zoo’s failure to value and retain an experienced workforce. “We are hemorrhaging critical animal care experience which directly affects the standard of care we can provide for our animals,” said Allison Cloud, an animal keeper and member of Teamsters 117. “The Zoo is forcing us to choose between our livelihoods and our animals, a heartbreaking decision no zookeeper ever wants to make.” Workers say low wages, the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, low morale, and high turnover have put the Zoo’s AZA accreditation at risk. Loss of accreditation could cripple the Zoo’s resources and lead to the transfer of animals to other accredited facilities. "Woodland Park Zoo cannot maintain AZA accreditation without us,” said Joe Gallenbach, an Exhibit Technician with IATSE Local 15. “The loss of AZA accreditation would demonstrate catastrophic mismanagement on the part of the Woodland Park Zoological Society.” The Coalition of Unions and the Zoo have one more bargaining session on the calendar: Friday, August 9. If the Zoo does not make an acceptable proposal next Friday, workers say they will take their case for fair wages and benefits to the public through direct, concerted action."

Now, when you bring the risk of AZA accreditation loss into the conversation, things get interesting. I've written before about how some zoos are legally or contractually obligated to maintain AZA accreditation and couldn't choose to leave. Woodland Park Zoo is one of those facilities: the agreement with the city that allows the Woodland Park Zoological Society requires them to be AZA accredited. If they lose it, they default on the agreement.

So, would there actually be a chance the facility could lose accreditation if the staff struck? I couldn't find any recent information about staff at other AZA zoos striking and how it related to their accreditation cycle, but I did find this, in an AZA press release about how the Aquarium of the Bay lost accreditation a few months ago.

"Silver Spring, Md. (May 24, 2024) –  The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Accreditation Commission unanimously voted to rescind the accreditation of the Aquarium of the Bay.  The independent Commission notified the institution on May 13, 2024, following its conclusion that the aquarium was not meeting accreditation standards in a number of key areas, including financial stability, staffing capabilities, and employee morale and turnover. Aquarium of the Bay has until June 13 to appeal the Commission’s decision."

So it looks like staffing issues and employee morale can definitely be things taken into consideration. Let's look at the AZA standards for more info. I found a couple standards that appear to be relevant:

7.3 "There must be an adequate number of trained paid and unpaid staff to care for the animals and to manage the institution’s diverse programs." Justification: "Although there is no set formula for prescribing the size of the staff (paid and unpaid), some of the criteria that may be used to define what is considered “adequate” include the number and type of species within the institution, the general condition of the animals and exhibits, and past staffing practices."

7.4 "Compensation for paid staff should be competitive with other similar positions in the local/regional/national market, as appropriate." Justification: "Institutions must be able to recruit and retain qualified paid staff. Competitive compensation is a key component in recruitment and retention of paid staff. Some positions can be successfully recruited for locally, while others are competitive on a more regional or national basis (e.g., animal care specialists)."

Both of those look like they could quite reasonably be an issue for WPZ at this point. They're losing paid staff due to low wages and operating understaffed due to the hiring freeze. Staff obviously aren't getting appropriate compensation if they're looking for jobs at nearby facilities that pay better.

Now, would the zoo actually lose accreditation if a strike came to pass? Honestly, I doubt it, because WPZ is too big a feather in AZA's cap for them to penalize them that harshly. Columbus - an equally prominent institution - got kicked because of a major public animal use scandal, but it was pretty clearly political because of how quickly they were re-accredited. I'd expect AZA might give WPZ a slap on the wrist, some stern public comment, maybe some minor penalties, but I'd be very surprised if they were willing to kick WPZ to the curb over something "just" as minor as a staffing problem.

Regardless, zoo staff deserve to be paid a living wage. I'll be really sad if the zoo is closed to a strike once the snow leopard cubs get old enough to debut - but I'd still rather the staff be paid a living wage than be able to see the fluffballs immediately. I want the people working at the zoos I visit to not be living in poverty. Zoo staff pub in an incredible amount of effort to care for animal collections and to facilitate the guest experience, and they should be able to do that without multiple roommates or three jobs. I know that the practical reality is that not all facilities can afford to pay their staff as highly as is ideal, but I'd expect a big zoo with reliable city funding to be able to do better. Supporting the zookeepers (and other zoo staff) is supporting the zoo.

I'll be keeping an eye on this going forward, both from a personal perspective (I'm a member, and I have a vested interest in what the organization I give money to does) and a professional interest in industry politics (what does AZA choose to do). I'll update if there's anything interesting on either end.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Paying for it doesn't make it a market

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Anyone who says "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product" has been suckered in by Big Tech, whose cargo-cult version of markets and the discipline they impose on companies.

Here's the way that story goes: companies that fear losing your business will treat you better, because treating you worse will cost them money. Since ad-supported media gets paid by advertisers, they are fine with abusing you to make advertisers happy, because the advertiser is the customer, and you are the product.

This represents a profound misunderstanding of how even capitalism's champions describe its workings. The purported virtue of capitalism is that it transforms the capitalist's greed into something of broad public value, by appealing to the capitalist's fear. A successful capitalist isn't merely someone figures out how to please their customers – they're also someone who figures out how to please their suppliers.

That's why tech platforms were – until recently – very good to (some of) their workforce. Technical labor was scarce and so platforms built whimsical "campuses" for tech workers, with amenities ranging from stock options to gourmet cafeterias to egg-freezing services for those workers planning to stay at their desks through their fertile years. Those workers weren't the "customer" – but they were treated better than any advertiser or user.

But when it came to easily replaced labor – testers, cleaning crew, the staff in those fancy cafeterias – the situation was much worse. Those workers were hired through cut-out shell companies, denied benefits, even made to enter via separate entrances on shifts that were scheduled to minimize the chance that they would ever interact with one of the highly paid tech workers at the firm.

Likewise, advertisers may be the tech companies' "customers" but that doesn't mean the platforms treat them well. Advertisers get ripped off just like the rest of us. The platforms gouge them on price, lie to them about advertising reach, and collude with one another to fix prices and defraud advertisers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

Now, it's true that the advertisers used to get a good deal from the platforms, and that it came at the expense of the users. Facebook lured in users by falsely promising never to spy on them. Then, once the users were locked in, Facebook flipped a switch, started spying on users from asshole to appetite, and then offered rock-bottom-priced, fine-grained, highly reliable ad-targeting to advertisers:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But once those advertisers were locked in, Facebook turned on them, too. Of course they did. The point of monopoly power isn't just getting too big to fail and too big to jail – it's getting too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

This is the thing that "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product" fails to comprehend. "If you're not paying for the product" is grounded in a cartoonish vision of markets in which "the customer is king" and successful businesses are those who cater to their customers – even at the expense of their workers and suppliers – will succeed.

In this frame, the advertiser is the platforms' customer, the customer is king, the platform inflicts unlimited harm upon all other stakeholders in service to those advertisers, the advertisers are so pleased with this white-glove service that they willingly pay a handsome premium to use the platform, and so the platform grows unimaginably wealthy.

But of course, if the platforms inflict unlimited harms upon their users, those users will depart, and then no amount of obsequious catering to advertisers will convince them to spend money on ads that no one sees. In the cargo-cult conception of platform capitalism, the platforms are able to solve this problem by "hacking our dopamine loops" – depriving us of our free will with "addictive" technologies that keep us locked to their platforms even when they grow so terrible that we all hate using them.

This means that we can divide the platform economy into "capitalists" who sell you things, and "surveillance capitalists" who use surveillance data to control your mind, then sell your compulsive use of their products to their cherished customers, the advertisers.

Surveillance capitalists like Google are thus said to have only been shamming when they offered us a high-quality product. That was just a means to an end: the good service Google offered in its golden age was just bait to trick us into handing over enough surveillance data that they could tune their mind-control technology, strip us of our free will, and then sell us to their beloved advertisers, for whom nothing is too good.

Meanwhile, the traditional capitalists – the companies that sell you things – are the good capitalists. Apple and Microsoft are disciplined by market dynamics. They won't spy on you because you're their customer, and so they have to keep you happy.

All this leads to an inexorable conclusion: unless we pay for things with money, we are doomed. Any attempt to pay with attention will end in a free-for-all where the platforms use their Big Data mind-control rays to drain us of all our attention. It is only when we pay with money that we can dicker over price and arrive at a fair and freely chosen offer.

This theory is great for tech companies: it elevates giving them money to a democracy-preserving virtue. It reframes handing your cash over to a multi-trillion dollar tech monopolist as good civics. It's easy to see why those tech giants would like that story, but boy, are you a sap if you buy it.

Because all capitalists are surveillance capitalists…when they can get away with it. Sure, Apple blocked Facebook from spying on Ios users…and then started illegally, secretly spying on those users and lying about it, in order to target ads to those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

And Microsoft spies on every Office 365 user and rats them out to their bosses ("Marge, this analytics dashboard says you're the division's eleventh-worst speller and twelfth-worst typist. Shape up or ship out!"). But the joke's on your boss: Microsoft also spies on your whole company and sells the data about it to your competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revengel

The platforms screw anyone they can. Sure, they lured in advertisers with good treatment, but once those advertisers were locked in, they fucked them over just as surely as they fucked over their users.

The surveillance capitalism hypothesis depends on the existence of a hypothetical – and wildly improbably – Big Data mind-control technology that keeps users locked to platforms even when the platform decays. Mind-control rays are an extraordinary claim supported by the thinnest of evidence (marketing materials from the companies as they seek to justify charging a premium to advertisers, combined with the self-serving humblebrags of millionaire Prodigal Tech Bros who claim to have awakened to the evil of using their dopamine-hacking sorcerous powers on behalf of their billionaire employers).

There is a much simpler explanation for why users stay on platforms even as they decline in quality: they are enmeshed in a social service that encompasses their friends, loved ones, customers, and communities. Even if everyone in this sprawling set of interlocking communities agrees that the platform is terrible, they will struggle to agree on what to do about it: where to go next and when to leave. This is the economists' "collective action problem" – a phenomenon with a much better evidentiary basis than the hypothetical, far-fetched "dopamine loop" theory.

To understand whom a platform treats well and whom it abuses, look not to who pays it and who doesn't. Instead, ask yourself: who has the platform managed to lock in? The more any stakeholder to a platform stands to lose by leaving, the worse the platform can treat them without risking their departure. Thus the beneficent face that tech companies turn to their most cherished tech workers, and the hierarchy of progressively more-abusive conditions for other workers – worse treatment for those whose work-visas are tied to their employment, and the very worst treatment for contractors testing the code, writing the documentation, labelling the data or cleaning the toilets.

If you care about how people are treated by platforms, you can't just tell them to pay for services instead of using ad-supported media. The most important factor in getting decent treatment out of a tech company isn't whether you pay with cash instead of attention – it's whether you're locked in, and thus a flight risk whom the platform must cater to.

It's perfectly possible for market dynamics to play out in a system in which we pay with our attention by watching ads. More than 50% of all web users have installed an ad-blocker, the largest boycott in the history of civilization:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

Ad-supported companies make an offer: How about in exchange for looking at this content, you let us spy on you in ways that would make Orwell blush and then cram a torrent of targeted ads into your eyeballs?" Ad-blockers let you make a counter-offer: "How about 'nah'?"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But ad-blocking is only possible on an open platform. A closed, locked-down platform that is illegal to modify isn't a walled garden, a fortress that keeps out the bad guys – it's a walled prison that locks you in, a prisoner of the worst impulses of the tech giant that built it. Apple can defend you from other companies' spying ways, but when Apple decides to spy on you, it's a felony to jailbreak your Iphone and block Apple's surveillance:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

I am no true believer in markets – but the people who say that paying for products will "align incentives" and make tech better claim to believe in the power of markets to make everyone better off. But real markets aren't just places where companies sell things – they're also places where companies buy things. Monopolies short-circuit the power of customer choice to force companies to do better. But monopsonies – markets dominated by powerful buyers – are just as poisonous to the claimed benefits of markets.

Even if you are "the product" – that is, even if you're selling your attention to a platform to package up and sell to an advertiser – that in no way precludes your getting decent treatment from the platform. A world where we can avail ourselves of blockers, where interoperablity eases our exodus from abusive platforms, where privacy law sets a floor below which we cannot bargain is a world where it doesn't matter if you're "the product" or "the customer" – you can still get a square deal.

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

Rather, as tech platforms eliminated competition, captured their regulators and expanded their IP rights so that interoperability was no longer a threat, they became too big to care whether any of their stakeholders were happy. First they came for the users, sure, but then they turned on the publishers, the advertisers, and finally, even their once-pampered tech workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

MLK said that "the law can't make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me." It's impossible to get tech bosses to believe you deserve care and decency, but you can stop them from abusing you. The way to do that is by making them fear you – by abolishing the laws that create lock-in, by legally enshrining a right to privacy, by protecting competition.

It's not by giving them money. Paying for a service does not make a company fear you, and anyone who thinks they can buy a platform's loyalty by paying for a service is a simp. A corporation is an immortal, transhuman colony organism that uses us as inconvenient gut-flora: no matter how much you love it, it will never love you back. It can't experience love – only fear.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

[mortuarybees]

I don't want to set unrealistic expectations for folks, not every union will be able to win things like a $42/hour wage. That has to do with the strength of the teamsters and the outrageous profits ups has seen in recent years. I'm union and I don't even make half that, but before our new contract (which we were able to win because we have had a surge of new members and activism within the union) I made even less. But beyond that we have been able to win things specific to our work, like compensation for speaking multiple languages, training new staff during our regular shifts, additional sick time, and a new, fairer, standardized system for requesting time off.

A union also offers you protection, it's pretty standard to my understanding that you have a right for a steward be present with you for any disciplinary meeting with management, and through the union's intervention, we were able to get severance when we were laid off last year with a week's notice when management planned to offer us nothing, and I also gained priority when I applied to other positions at the company, which is why I'm still fortunate enough to be part of this amazing union. Being part of a union doesn't make your workplace perfect, and a union requires work and involvement--it doesn't happen in the background, its strength comes from the commitment of everyone in it--and it can ask a lot of you if you are someone who's willing to be more involved.

But I think something my generation can barely fathom is the concept of being at a workplace for years and years and years, something that was so common for our grandparents. It's virtually impossible to do it and it's not even desirable; most places are a revolving door of dissatisfied, overworked staff and I think a lot of people have experienced working at a place and every single one of your coworkers turning over by the time youre fed up with the poor conditions and treatment and leave for another job where the same thing happens. Through a union, though, you can shape a place you want to stay at for a long time, or shape a place you care about and make it better for people who will be there after you. Union employees are more likely to stay at our workplace for longer, we form a stronger community at our site. We're better paid, get better benefits, and have an avenue to shape the place we spend so much of our lives. We aren't powerless. Yes, something like $25 is taken out of all my paychecks, but I think to anyone in this nightmare of a workforce, that has to sound well worth it for all the benefits being part of a union gives you and your coworkers.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Both parties choose to ignore this still-unfolding public health crisis. Neither seeks to prevent further covid infections. Neither seeks to prioritize funding and research for covid and long covid treatment. Neither cares about you or your livelihood.

by Laura Weiss

For over four years, long COVID-19 patients and advocates have been frustrated by a lack of public acknowledgment of their condition and the ongoing long-term impact of COVID-19

“I was diagnosed with long COVID, which will disable me for the rest of my life.”

These were the words of Martha, addressed to Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris at a town hall event this month hosted by Univision for Latinx voters. Martha explained that after her illness left her unable to work, she applied for disability benefits. Yet three years later, she still has not received a response, leaving her homeless, broke, and unable to get medical treatment.

“I lost everything,” she said in an urgent, strained whisper. “How will you help the disabled people?”

Martha’s question was notable not just in its denunciation of the brokenness of the disability benefits system, but also because it was one of the first mentions of long COVID on the campaign trail. Though the Biden-Harris administration has claimed that “COVID no longer runs our lives,” some 17 million Americans have been disabled by long-term symptoms of COVID-19, with millions out of the workforce and an approximate cost of $1 trillion to the global economy. This condition disproportionately affects Latinx people, women, the LGBTQIA+ community, and people with disabilities.

Harris responded to Martha by pointing to her efforts to include long COVID as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and plans to relieve medical debt. However, ADA designation does not impact benefits determinations, and the challenges to accessing care for this and other complex chronic illnesses go far beyond paying debts.

For over four years, long COVID patients and advocates have been frustrated by a lack of public acknowledgment of their condition, the long-term impact of COVID-19 and false claims that the pandemic is over. According to Meighan Stone, the executive director of the Long Covid Campaign and a long COVID sufferer herself, the town hall created an opening for advocates to rally for more funding and attention on this urgent issue in an upcoming administration.

On the heels of the event, the Long Covid Campaign, which is nonpartisan, connected with the Harris campaign’s newly appointed Disability Engagement Director, Anastasia Somoza, last week.

“She was incredibly responsive,” Stone said about the preliminary conversation, though time will tell whether policy shifts will follow should the campaign transition into power come January. The Trump campaign has not responded to her outreach efforts.

While this and other recent developments, such as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) conference last month on improving long COVID research and bills in Congress demanding a long COVID “moonshot,” to get $1 billion minimum in annual funding are promising, both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been quiet on the subject. Advocates agree that the next president must do better to acknowledge and address the urgency of long COVID and prevent the crisis from further growing.

“The lack of deep and direct involvement from the Harris campaign and [Biden] administration regarding long COVID is incredibly frustrating,” said Cynthia Adinig, a long COVID patient and co-founder of the BIPOC Equity Agency, based in Virginia. “As a patient, voter, and advocate, it’s disheartening to see the silence, especially when long COVID disproportionately affects marginalized communities.”

Dr. Lucky Tran, a science communicator based in New York, said that political campaigns need to take the impact of COVID-19 and long COVID more seriously and develop clear policies to prevent it.

“People see COVID as a poisonous electoral issue,” Tran said, adding that there are ways to make the topic more politically appealing. The burden of long COVID connects to popular issues like health care access, housing, guaranteed sick leave, and public benefits, which campaigns could leverage.

A new administration could also go far in supporting improved research and treatment efforts for long Covid. The RECOVER initiative for long COVID, launched in 2021 under the NIH, has faced widespread criticism for its slowness, inefficiency, and lack of focus on clinical trials and treatments.

“We’re more than four years and $1.15 billion into the COVID pandemic, and Americans living with long COVID, and it’s still a DIY project for patients,” Stone said. There are still zero FDA-approved treatments for long COVID.

Last month’s RECOVER-TLC (Treat Long COVID) conference at NIH focused on the additional $515 million allocated to the RECOVER initiative. NIH Director Dr. Monica M. Bertagnolli, who was appointed last year, led the conference alongside Dr. Jeanne Marazzo. Marazzo is a leader in HIV/AIDs research and the new head of the National Institute for Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the institute where RECOVER will now be housed. Stone said these appointments mark a positive “shift” for long Covid progress.

Tran noted that under a Trump administration, both appointments would likely be reversed, and funding for the initiative would be further slashed.

“The Trump administration has shown a hostility to funding that sort of biomedical research,” he said.

During the conference, Bertagnolli and Marazzo reaffirmed the seriousness of the long COVID crisis, their understanding of patient frustrations, and their commitment to addressing the problem head-on. Bertagnolli discussed the progress made thus far but admitted that it is time for clinical trials of treatments to get further underway. She committed to a “true partnership” with patients to “align around a common agenda…and really move this forward.”

The panels featured testimony by patient advocates, doctors, and researchers across disciplines. These experts offered perspectives on how to best identify trial participants, the importance of inclusivity and collaboration with patients in running trials, including pediatric trials, and the regulatory processes for getting treatments approved and in the hands of long COVID sufferers as quickly as possible.

“The meeting was extremely positive and productive and collaborative, and a real change in approach,” said Stone. But she stressed that any solution to this crisis must be inclusive. “That has to include people on Medicaid, on Medicare, hourly wage workers that don’t have health insurance, that is going to let them get access to specialists who are going to write prescriptions off-label,” she said, as well as communities of color.

Another challenge for these trials is to ensure that long COVID patients can safely participate without risking COVID reinfection. At the NIH meetings, few agency officials present wore masks, though the majority of patients did. On Oct. 29, the NIH announced it would be reinstating mask requirements for all clinical trials.

Still, Lisa McCorkell, the co-founder of the Patient Led Research Collaborative and a long COVID patient based in Oakland, California, who spoke at the event via videoconference, told Prism that the meetings left her “cautiously optimistic.”

Adinig echoed this sentiment but added that there is skepticism about the NIH in the chronic illness community.

“We’ve heard similar commitments before, and the follow-through has often been slow,” she said. “The advocacy community will need to keep pushing to make sure this momentum doesn’t fade.”

But both McCorkell and Stone spoke to the importance of securing more funding for long COVID research. Thus far, it has all come through annual presidential appropriations, making it vulnerable to changing priorities each year. “We need sustained, comprehensive, significant funding year over year,” said Stone.

Such funding could come from the Long COVID Moonshot, also brought about through dogged advocacy by groups such as the Patient Led Research Collaborative. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), proposed legislation in the Senate in August that would guarantee $1 billion per year in funding for long COVID research. Reps. Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley introduced similar legislation in the House last month with a handful of cosigners. However, it currently lacks bipartisan support.

But as McCorkell said, “Even if those conversations don’t result in a vote for this specific bill, it can go a long way in raising awareness for long COVID.” Stone added that White House support for efforts like Moonshot could go a long way.

Tran also pointed to the importance of the White House promoting ongoing COVID-19 prevention efforts and added that such efforts don’t need to be “all or nothing.” The administration could encourage mask-wearing, staying home when sick, and testing. It could also raise awareness about long COVID and commit to developing better vaccines and tests, and making them widely available, and improving indoor air quality. The government also needs to be much clearer about their public health guidance, especially that coming from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and publicly denounce mask bans, he added.

Meanwhile, Tran warned, another Trump presidency would likely cut healthcare access, as well as try to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), deregulate public health institutions, and weaken protections for disabled and other marginalized groups. Not to mention the impacts of banning abortion and ignoring climate goals, increasing the risk of future pandemics.

“We need to stop…thinking COVID is just a niche issue,” he said. “All of these issues are connected, no matter what you care about.”

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

Over the past few months, we’ve watched as major corporations such as Disney , Anheuser-Busch, and Target have hopped on the LGBT train and alienated their traditional client bases as a result. Regardless of the often swift and brutal backlash they know will follow, others, including North Face, Nike, and Kohl’s, are always waiting in the wings to become the next sacrificial lamb.

It turns out there’s a reason for this counterintuitive behavior that goes far beyond virtue signaling: Companies are trying to raise their Corporate Equality Index. The more woke issues a company supports, the higher their score.

A CEI is essentially a “woke” credit score that is determined by the Human Rights Campaign , a 501(c)(4) organization that describes itself as “the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States.” No one will be surprised to hear that George Soros’s Open Society Foundations is HRC’s largest donor. Other donors include the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the labor unions for the National Education Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers, according to Influence Watch .

Influence Watch reports HRC’s public charity arm, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, plays an influential role in Democratic Party politics by pressuring companies to comply with its social agenda.

A company’s CEI is derived from its performance in five areas :

Workforce Protections (5 points possible).

Inclusive Benefits (50 points possible).

Supporting an Inclusive Culture (25 points possible).

Corporate Social Responsibility (20 points possible).

Responsible Citizenship (-25).

The New York Post reports that “HRC sends representatives to corporations every year telling them what kind of stuff they have to make visible at the company. They give them a list of demands and if they don’t follow through there’s a threat that you won’t keep your CEI score.”

James Lindsay, editor of the website New Discourses, told the New York Post, “HRC administers the CEI ranking ‘like an extortion racket, like the Mafia.’”

In a 2018 letter to CEOs from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, whom Fortune magazine has dubbed the “ face of ESG ,” he emphasizes a “new model of governance” in harmony with ESG values.

Fink wrote , “Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. … [I]f a company doesn’t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose, it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.”

Fink is mistaken. Society is not demanding that companies serve a social purpose. Rather, ESG is being forced upon society by the global elites who wield it as a weapon and a control mechanism they can use to consolidate power over the masses.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[The East African is Kenyan Private Media]

The United States has officially struck off Uganda and three other African countries as beneficiaries of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), effectively ending Kampala’s ability to export certain commodities to the US duty-free.

In a decree dated December 29, President Joe Biden said he had “determined” that the four countries “do not meet the requirements” necessary to allow them to continue benefiting from the trade deal, effecting his earlier stated plans to delist them.

“Accordingly, I have decided to terminate the designations of the Central African Republic, Gabon, Niger, and Uganda as beneficiary sub-Saharan African countries for purposes of section 506A of the Trade Act, effective January 1, 2024,” read the statement by the US President.

In an October 2023 letter to the speaker of the US Congress expressing his intention to remove the four countries from the list of Agoa beneficiaries, Mr Biden said Uganda has “engaged in gross violations of internationally recognised human rights.”

This came after President Yoweri Museveni assented to the anti-gay law passed by the Ugandan lawmakers, which introduced serious repercussions, including life imprisonment or death, for same-sex relations in the country.

Uganda’s expulsion from the deal could destroy thousands of jobs, cause a foreign-exchange earnings drought, and low utilisation of raw materials locally, experts have warned.[...]

Over 80 percent of Uganda’s exports under Agoa were from the agricultural sector, which employs about 72 percent of the country’s workforce, indicating that the expulsion could have a significant hit on jobs.[...]

In the region, Uganda now joins South Sudan, Somalia, and Burundi on the list of countries unable to benefit from the preferential trade agreement with the US. Juba was suspended in 2015 due to the rise of ethnic conflicts.

Other countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have been removed from the list are Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali, Gabon, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Central African Republic, [Niger,] Zimbabwe and Sudan.

2 Jan 24

[lostinpleasantview]

Sick? Injured? Unable to work? Pleasantview's new Benefit and Employment Center is here to help. Recently launched as the flagship of Mayor Hatfield's Uplift Initiative as part of her Ten Point Economic Plan, with the goal of simplifying and streamlining access to social benefits for eligible Sims while providing access to the tools for Sims to reenter the workforce on their own terms. Childcare is provided for applicants while they are onsite. Supporters of Mayor Hatfield's Uplift Initiative claim that these new Benefit and Employment Centers will assist those most in need—such as single parents with young children. Opponents claim the opposite—claiming bombastically that the mayor is merely coddling Pleasantview's dregs er, citizens—and that these so-called benefit centers will breed a new culture of moochers and layabouts.

City Councilman Ambrose Elias Patooty IV, noted curmudgeon and centenarian stated in a comment to Pleasantview News Center (PVNC) that: "Once again, Mayor Hatfield has shown the citizens of Pleasantview that she is a tax and spend liberal like her bedfellows within the... whatever party she's part of! Today she hands out money to all those who ask for it; tomorrow she will give homosexual amphibians the same rights as you and I! It is OUR children—well, not MY children, my children are grown and have the benefit of a trust fund—who shall foot the bill down the line for the mayor's so-called generosity. There is nothing wrong with grit and hard work! Our citizens don't need a handout, what they need is for Mayor Hatfield to reopen the MINES! ...What do you mean, the mines closed down eighty years ago? I have no idea what you're talking about. Who are you and why are you in my office?"

[vren-diagram]

The Nordic model has been characterized as follows:[16]

An elaborate social safety net, in addition to public services such as free education and universal healthcare[16] in a largely tax-funded system.[17]

Strong property rights, contract enforcement and overall ease of doing business.[18]

Public pension plans.[16]

High levels of democracy as seen in the Freedom in the World survey and Democracy Index.[19][20]

Free trade combined with collective risk sharing (welfare social programmes and labour market institutions) which has provided a form of protection against the risks associated with economic openness.[16]

Little product market regulation. Nordic countries rank very high in product market freedom according to OECD rankings.[16]

Low levels of corruption.[19][16] In Transparency International's 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden were ranked among the top 10 least corrupt of the 179 countries evaluated.[21]

A partnership between employers, trade unions and the government, whereby these social partners negotiate the terms to regulating the workplace amongst themselves, rather than the terms being imposed by law.[22][23] Sweden has decentralised wage co-ordination while Finland is ranked the least flexible.[16] The changing economic conditions have given rise to fear among workers as well as resistance by trade unions in regards to reforms.[16]

High trade union density and collective bargaining coverage.[24] In 2019, trade union density was 90.7% in Iceland, 67.0% in Denmark, 65.2% in Sweden, 58.8% in Finland, and 50.4% in Norway; in comparison, trade union density was 16.3% in Germany and 9.9% in the United States.[25] Additionally, in 2018, collective bargaining coverage was 90% in Iceland, 88.8% in Finland (2017), 88% in Sweden, 82% in Denmark, and 69% in Norway; in comparison collective bargaining coverage was 54% in Germany and 11.7% in the United States.[26] The lower union density in Norway is mainly explained by the absence of a Ghent system since 1938. In contrast, Denmark, Finland and Sweden all have union-run unemployment funds.[27]

The Nordic countries received the highest ranking for protecting workers rights on the International Trade Union Confederation 2014 Global Rights Index, with Denmark being the only nation to receive a perfect score.[28]

Sweden at 56.6% of GDP, Denmark at 51.7%, and Finland at 48.6% reflect very high public spending.[29] Public expenditure for health and education is significantly higher in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in comparison to the OECD average.[30]

Overall tax burdens as a percentage of GDP are high, with Denmark at 45.9% and both Finland and Sweden at 44.1%.[31] The Nordic countries have relatively flat tax rates, meaning that even those with medium and low incomes are taxed at relatively high levels.[32][33]

The United Nations World Happiness Reports show that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe. The Nordics ranked highest on the metrics of real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, generosity and freedom from corruption.[34] The Nordic countries place in the top 10 of the World Happiness Report 2018, with Finland and Norway taking the top spots.[35]

x

I think a lot of people are missing that the Nordic model is:

generally very friendly to businesses

composed of largely organically set standards (workers rights secured by collective bargaining and trade-unions, not by a centralized authority) (as opposed to a centralized bureaucracy)

Largely structured to provide citizens with benefits that make workforce participation easier. The ordering of the social safety net and welfare state make it relatively easy to upskill and hold a job.

[smartscaliing]

The Strategic Advantage of HR Outsourcing Companies in Workforce Planning and Employee Management

In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies are constantly seeking innovative ways to stay competitive, manage their workforce effectively, and cut operational costs. Human Resources (HR) departments play a crucial role in managing talent, but many organizations find themselves overwhelmed with the complexities of employee management. HR outsourcing companies offer a solution to these challenges by providing specialized services that streamline HR processes, enable better workforce planning, and offer comprehensive employee management services. This blog will explore the benefits of engaging with HR outsourcing companies and how their services can enhance your company’s workforce planning and employee management efforts.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this EcoWatch story:

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) announced on Tuesday $428 million in grant funding for the building and expansion of green energy manufacturing in communities where coal mines have recently been decommissioned.

The 14 projects in 15 United States coal communities were chosen by DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains (MESC) and will help accelerate domestic manufacturing of clean energy, a press release from DOE said.

“The transition to America’s clean energy future is being shaped by communities filled with the valuable talent and experience that comes from powering our country for decades,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in the press release. “By leveraging the know-how and skillset of the former coal workforce, we are strengthening our national security while helping advance forward-facing technologies and revitalize communities across the nation.”

Led by small- to medium-sized businesses, the projects will address crucial vulnerabilities in the country’s energy supply chain.

Five of the projects selected will be in or near disadvantaged communities. Each of the projects will include a benefits plan developed to maximize heath, environmental and economic benefits.

“These are communities that powered America for literally decades, and this administration, the Biden-Harris administration, believes they’re exactly the right folks in the right communities to lead the clean energy transition for decades to come,” David Turk, deputy U.S. energy secretary, told reporters during a call, as Reuters reported.

The projects span a dozen states — including West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Texas and Utah — and will leverage more than $500 million in investments by the private sector, while creating 1,900-plus jobs.

[nenelonomh]

human resource management pt.4

woah! part four!

currently revising for my business exam on 28-05-24, so i'm writing and scheduling some revision posts. in these posts, i copy my chaotic notes into tumblr post format - it's a fun way for me to revise.

this post will focus on the hrm topics of training and development, discipline and grievances, and workforce planning. it will be the last part of my hrm revision series. below are links to the other three posts.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

training and development

this hrm topic refers to the process of acquiring skills, knowledge and attitudes to enhance employees' job performance. some features of training and development are addressing training needs, and evaluating both the process and outcomes of the training.

examples of this include onboarding programs, skill-specific training, leadership development, and performance management.

advantages of a business investing in training and development for it's employees include error minimization, and enhanced product or service quality. due to this, customer satisfaction is likely to increase. there is also likely to be reduced employee turnover, as the employees will feel as if they matter to the organization.

some disadvantages include the costs of time and finance. a company may feel the need to stay updated with the latest training methodologies, which can add to the costs. additionally, if a business does not evenly distribute training and development programs, a skill gap may arise between trained and untrained employees.

discipline and grievances

discipline is the act of an employer addressing and possibly punishing employee behaviour or performance issues. it can be used to correct and prevent future misconduct among employees. an employer may reprimand an employee's behaviour through verbal warnings, warnings in writing, suspension, demotion, or termination. of course, the severity of the punishment depends on the severity of the misconduct.

discipline helps to establish clear expectations for behaviour and performance, also creating a culture of accountability and professionalism. however, excessive discipline without room for employee input or improvement can lead to disengagement.

grievances refer to statements or complaints raised by an employee against a fellow employee/employer. grievance procedures are put in place to deal with formal complaints in an unbiased manner.

possible topics for grievances include pay and benefits, bullying, harassment, working conditions, and workload. grievances help to pinpoint problems within a company, promoting a feeling of fairness and serving as a feedback system for the business.

workforce planning

workforce planning refers to the overall management of an organization's workforce. it is a systematic process that will assess the needs or an organization's workforce and does what is necessary to meet these human resource needs. it is the backbone of human resources management.

most importantly, this planning anticipates the future needs of a business's staff, working on the future needs of the staff of a company.

workforce planning benefits all staff by predicting possible future problems, which allows the issue to be resolved swiftly when it does occur. there are fewer resource risks involved in workforce planning when a workforce plan is reactive to change.

one problem associated with workforce planning is that it can be very time-consuming. it takes a long time to develop and implement a workforce plan and can diverge attention away from other business activities.

///

i've finally explored all the hrm topics in tumblr post form. i hope you were able to learn something!

i look forward to any feedback or questions from other ibdp business students, or anyone interested in business topics.

❤️ nene

image source: pinterest

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Last November, publishing got some excellent news: the planned merger of Penguin Random House (the largest publisher in the history of human civilization) with its immediate competitor Simon & Schuster would not be permitted, thanks to the DOJ's deftly argued case against the deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost four. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as Stephen King said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).

But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:

https://lithub.com/unlivable-and-untenable-molly-mcghee-on-the-punishing-life-of-junior-publishing-employees/

It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the writers' strike and actors' strike). And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html

But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three. Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.

Think of healthcare. Consolidation in pharma lead to price-gouging, where hospitals were suddenly paying 1,000% more for routine drugs. Hospitals formed regional monopolies and boycotted pharma companies unless they lowered their prices - and then turned around and screwed insurers, jacking up the price of care. Health insurers gobbled each other up in an orgy of mergers and fought the hospitals.

Now the health care system is composed of a series of gigantic, abusive monopolists - pharma, hospitals, medical equipment, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers - and they all conspire to wreck the lives of only two parts of the system who can't fight back: patients and health care workers. Patients pay more for worse care, and medical workers get paid less for worse working conditions.

So while there was no question that a PRH takeover of Simon & Schuster would be bad for writers and readers, it was also clear that S&S - and indeed, all of the Big Five publishers - would be under pressure from the monopolies in their own supply chain. What's more, it was clear that S&S couldn't remain tethered to Paramount, its current owner.

Last week, Paramount announced that it was going to flip S&S to KKR, one of the world's most notorious private equity companies. KKR has a long, long track record of ghastly behavior, and its portfolio currently includes other publishing industry firms, including one rotten monopolist, raising similar concerns to the ones that scuttled the PRH takeover last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/books/booksupdate/paramount-simon-and-schuster-kkr-sale.html

Let's review a little of KKR's track record, shall we? Most spectacularly, they are known for buying and destroying Toys R Us in a deal that saw them extract $200m from the company, leaving it bankrupt, with lifetime employees getting $0 in severance even as its executives paid themselves tens of millions in "performance bonuses":

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/03/private-equity-bosses-took-200m-out-of-toys-r-us-and-crashed-the-company-lifetime-employees-got-0-in-severance/

The pillaging of Toys R Us isn't the worst thing KKR did, but it was the most brazen. KKR lit a beloved national chain on fire and then walked away, hands in pockets, whistling. They didn't even bother to clear their former employees' sensitive personnel records out of the unlocked filing cabinets before they scarpered:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/23/exploring-the-ruins-of-a-toys-r-us-discovering-a-trove-of-sensitive-employee-data/

But as flashy as the Toys R Us caper was, it wasn't the worst. Private equity funds specialize in buying up businesses, loading them with debts, paying themselves, and then leaving them to collapse. They're sometimes called vulture capitalists, but they're really vampire capitalists:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr-houdaille/

Given a choice, PE companies don't want to prey on sick businesses - they preferentially drain off value from thriving ones, preferably ones that we must use, which is why PE - and KKR in particular - loves to buy health care companies.

Heard of the "surprise billing epidemic"? That's where you go to a hospital that's covered by your insurer, only to discover - after the fact - that the emergency room is operated by a separate, PE-backed company that charges you thousands for junk fees. KKR and Blackstone invented this scam, then funneled millions into fighting the No Surprises Act, which more-or-less killed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

KKR took one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, Envision, hostage to surprise billing, making it dependent on these fraudulent payments. When Congress finally acted to end this scam, KKR was able to take to the nation's editorial pages and damn Congress for recklessly endangering all the patients who relied on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

Like any smart vampire, KKR doesn't drain its victim in one go. They find all kinds of ways to stretch out the blood supply. During the pandemic, KKR was front of the line to get massive bailouts for its health-care holdings, even as it fired health-care workers, increasing the workload and decreasing the pay of the survivors of its indiscriminate cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

It's not just emergency rooms. KKR bought and looted homes for people with disabilities, slashed wages, cut staff, and then feigned surprise at the deaths, abuse and misery that followed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/kkr-brightspring-disability-private-equity-abuse

Workers' wages went down to $8/hour, and they were given 36 hour shifts, and then KKR threatened to have any worker who walked off the job criminally charged with patient abandonment:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

For KKR, people with disabilities and patients make great victims - disempowered and atomized, unable to fight back. No surprise, then, that so many of KKR's scams target poor people - another group that struggles to get justice when wronged. KKR took over Dollar General in 2007 and embarked on a nationwide expansion campaign, using abusive preferential distributor contracts and targeting community-owned grocers to trap poor people into buying the most heavily processed, least nutritious, most profitable food available:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

94.5% of the Paycheck Protection Program - designed to help small businesses keep their workers payrolled during lockdown - went to giant businesses, fraudulently siphoned off by companies like Longview Power, 40% owned by KKR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/20/great-danes/#ppp

KKR also helped engineer a loophole in the Trump tax cuts, convincing Justin Muzinich to carve out taxes for C-Corporations, which let KKR save billions in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/02/broken-windows/#Justin-Muzinich

KKR sinks its fangs in every part of the economy, thanks to the vast fortunes it amassed from its investors, ripped off from its customers, and fraudulently obtained from the public purse. After the pandemic, KKR scooped up hundreds of companies at firesale prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/medtronic-stole-your-ventilator/#blackstone-kkr

Ironically, the investors in KKR funds are also its victims - especially giant public pension funds, whom KKR has systematically defrauded for years:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/22/stimpank/#kentucky

And now KKR has come for Simon & Schuster. The buyout was trumpeted to the press as a done deal, but it's far from a fait accompli. Before the deal can close, the FTC will have to bless it. That blessing is far from a foregone conclusion. KKR also owns Overdrive, the monopoly supplier of e-lending software to libraries.

Overdrive has a host of predatory practices, loathed by both libraries and publishers (indeed, much of the publishing sector's outrage at library e-lending is really displaced anger at Overdrive). There's a plausible case that the merger of one of the Big Five publishers with the e-lending monopoly will present competition issues every bit as deal-breaking as the PRH/S&S merger posed.

(Image: Sefa Tekin/Pexels, modified)

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/08/vampire-capitalism/#kkr

[mariacallous]

The Trump administration should be congratulated for making government efficiency a high priority. Absolutely no one, liberal or conservative, wants to see their tax dollars wasted. But cutting government is a tricky business for two reasons. The first, outlined in a companion piece here by John Dilulio, is that the vast majority of the government’s work is not conducted by civil servants paid by the federal government—it is conducted by contractors who spend tax dollars. Any honest look at efficiency would have to take a look at contractors as well as the federal workers. The second is that if the Trump administration were to be successful in actually cutting as deeply as they are suggesting, the disruption would be intolerable to nearly every American regardless of party.

People like to say they want less government spending but hate it when their favorite program is cut. Conservatives want defense spending to be maintained or even increased. Senior citizens don’t want anyone to touch Social Security or Medicare. Most want law enforcement and health programs to promote their well-being. Nearly everyone wants clean water, reliable power grids, and strong border security.

“Disruption” is a favorite word in the business community, where it sometimes results in innovation, ingenious products, and great profits. But no one has to buy a particular car or frequent a special e-commerce site. The problem is that in contrast to the private sector, many of the things government does are not optional. They are required to serve the public and maintain vital services already approved by federal officials. Thus “disruption” in government can mean that Congress won’t approve the reductions and the “government disruptor” will be thrown out at the next election by voters upset at the proposed reductions.

So, let’s see how government cuts might work in the Trump administration. Trump has chosen Vivek Ramaswamy along with Elon Musk to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. So far, they’ve said they want to cut $2 trillion from the federal government, dissolve agencies, and reduce the workforce by draconian amounts.

The biggest portion of federal spending is mandatory spending—money that goes directly back to the citizen; this includes Social Security, (the largest), Medicare and Medicaid, veteran benefits, and unemployment insurance. Who gets these benefits and how much they get them is set in law. The DOGE team could chalk up a lot of savings by cutting Social Security benefits, but they would have to go to Congress to change the law first. No executive can unilaterally  impose spending reductions on programs already approved by Congress. Indeed, Trump himself, who made one of the wisest political decisions ever when he promised not to touch people’s Social Security or Medicare, would probably be the first politician in line to throw the DOGE team out if they want to cut Social Security.

Assuming that you can’t cut mandatory spending (which is 66% of the 2022 budget), the DOGE team will have to look for savings in what’s known as discretionary spending. After paying interest on the debt, that amounts to about 26% of overall federal spending. In 2023, this category was $1.7 trillion, much of which is traditional defense spending. There is not enough money in the discretionary pot to meet Ramaswamy’s goal in one year; over two years, the cuts would be almost impossible.

Here are some examples of what’s in the discretionary part of the budget and how deep cuts would affect it. Let’s suppose that to meet these goals, the DOGE team planned to cut 80% of the workforce. Here’s what would happen:

There are about 1,800 air traffic controllers right now. These are highly skilled workers who keep planes from crashing into one another on the runway or in the air. Cutting air traffic controllers by 80% would mean we’d be left with 360 people to manage American air space. Perhaps artificial intelligence could someday replace these people but right now that seems as unsafe as self-driving cars.

There are about 19,357 border patrol agents working to protect American borders right now. An 80% cut would leave just under 4,000 agents protecting our borders. It’s hard enough to hire border patrol agents as it is, so a cut that big will truly open the borders and make a complete mockery of Trump’s pledge to be tough on illegal border crossings.

Over at the Social Security Administration, 60,000 people are responsible for approving checks totaling over $1.5 trillion per year. They approve benefits for people who are newly retiring, take people off the rolls as they die, correct mistakes, search for fraud, and do many other jobs to keep the money flowing to those who earned it. An 80% cut would leave 12,000 people to administer a program that represents 30% of income for people over age 65 and considerably more for poorer people.

Other “bloated bureaucracies” that come under the discretionary portion of the budget are the people at the Centers for Disease Control that track down foodborne illnesses each year. The FBI has come under extreme criticism ever since they took documents from Mar-a-Lago. But if it was abolished, who would track down and prosecute the drug cartels that bring fentanyl and other drugs that are destroying America into the country? And who would supply weather forecasts, including hurricane and tornado warnings if the employees at the National Oceanic and Space Administration were cut?

So how do you cut government? With a scalpel, not an axe. I know because between 1993 and 2000, the Clinton administration ran a program called the National Performance Review, which I directed under Vice President Al Gore. Nicknamed REGO for “reinventing government,” the program became the longest-running reform effort in American history—resulting in 426,000 cuts to the federal workforce. We conducted a thorough review agency by agency, something the DOGE program would be wise to repeat. That resulted in hundreds of recommendations, two-thirds of which were enacted with $136 billion in savings. We enacted customer service standards and performance metrics (under the Government Performance and Results Act passed in 1993). We closed superfluous offices, cut 16,000 pages of regulations, passed a major procurement reform bill, and fixed longstanding challenges in agencies from FEMA to the FAA.

But that was thirty years ago. It’s time to do it again. Things that were just pipe dreams back then, like filing taxes electronically, are now standard operating procedures. When we started the National Performance Review, the internet was just becoming available to Americans; by moving government information and then transactions online, we saved a lot of money. No doubt today’s technology can save even more.

But so far, the unrealistic approach DOGE has taken has in it the seeds of its own failure, both from a policy and political standpoint. Americans won’t like it if the border becomes more open or if airplane safety is dramatically imperiled. And don’t mess with Social Security checks. A screwup there will create such a blowback that it will have Trump running his efficiency experts out of the White House faster than you can say “Department of Government Efficiency.”

[covid-safer-hotties]

A better approach to mitigate the risk of airborne infections in workplaces - Published Sept 13, 2024

A ‘let them rip’ attitude towards the mitigation of the risk of common airborne infections in the workplace is unacceptable in terms of law, good occupational medicine practice and public health. A proactive strategy underpinned by a better paradigm is urgently needed for the benefit of society and especially to protect those vulnerable through significant exposure or those susceptible for reasons such as co-morbidity. Even if the will to do what is needed at a national level remains lacking, forward-looking workplaces and other stakeholders should still take proactive steps to mitigate the risk of airborne infection. Thus they would fulfil the duty of care to workers and others as well as improve the resilience and productive potential of workplaces.

In 2010, this journal highlighted the potential challenge of a pandemic in the ensuing decade [1] and so it came to pass. During the peak of the pandemic, ‘Occupational Medicine’ played its part both in disseminating new knowledge and in expressing authoritative opinion. Looking to the future, many observers are awaiting cues from the outcomes of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Public Inquiry. The Module 1 report showed that the UK Government failed its citizens with its lack of preparation or a preventive strategy [2]. The report also emphasized the need to build resilience in government, associated institutions and their plans, but it has yet to address the resilience built into traditional occupational health control measures such as ventilation [3]. Module 3 [4] might address these measures but the limitations of the Inquiry could disappoint those concerned with workplace health, such as by addressing only health and social care workplaces (HSCW). Analyses of ‘lessons learned’ from COVID-19 [5–7] indicate various but sufficient reasons to eschew attitudes of ‘living with the virus’ or of reversion to ‘business as usual’ when facing common airborne infections at work such as coronaviruses, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Several studies attest to the increased risk of COVID-19 for many workers besides in HSCW [8]. Long COVID has had a profound impact on the UK’s workforce and economy [9]. Regrettably, the UK Government has considerably scaled down COVID-19 monitoring. Despite this, the data show persistent significant COVID-19 infection with recurrent waves, fuelled both by waning immunity and by new variants, and which are not limited to the winter during which seasonal influenza and RSV also contribute significantly [10]. Perhaps unsurprisingly in 2022, the UK sickness absence rate rose to 2.6% (the highest since 2004) [11]. The contribution of airborne infections to this absence may be variously coded as ‘minor illnesses’ (includes coughs, colds and flu), ‘other’ (includes coronavirus and infectious diseases) as well as ‘respiratory conditions’- comprising, respectively, 29%, 24% and 8% of the total sickness absence occurrences in 2022 [11]. Measures to reduce the risk of contracting airborne infections should, therefore, contribute to any strategy to reduce sickness absence and presenteeism and thus to improve productivity and benefit the economy. However, better data collection and analyses are needed for the quantification of the employment cost of common airborne infections in workplaces, as well as for monitoring interventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated both the legal duty and the means for employers to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health at work of all their employees by reducing their exposure to a common airborne infection at work [12]. Similarly, employers are also obliged to ensure that other persons who may be affected are not exposed to risks to their health from the work being undertaken [12]. These could include children at school, passengers using public transport, the public in retail premises and hospitality venues, as well as in hospitals where the risk and burden of transmission are perhaps most obvious [13]. Schools, catering establishments and hospitals need to tackle the risk of airborne infection with the same commitment with which they currently address infestations, food hygiene and wound infection, respectively. Special considerations also apply to protect individuals who are more susceptible, according to Equality law [12,14].

On the basis of extant knowledge [6,7], if a workplace were to be truly ‘health promoting’ [3], then it would have to exceed mere compliance with the law and would have to rise to the challenge of having less exposure to airborne pathogens within the workplace than the average in the community outside. Such an endeavour would contribute to public health through a reduction in the overall incidence of airborne infection and in the pool of replicating and mutating pathogens. It would also make workplaces and society much more resilient in the face of the next airborne infection outbreak, especially during the lag period before a reliable vaccine or other pharmaceutical intervention were to become available.

Many might baulk at the challenge of developing a proactive strategy to mitigate the risk of airborne infection in the workplace perhaps because of the ubiquitous exposure throughout the community and the multifactorial contributions to the individual or societal burdens. However, the occupational health community has successfully dealt with analogous heterogeneous and complex challenges through a combination of good science and good policy in the past. The development and successful implementation of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) ‘Tackling work-related stress using the Management Standards approach’ with its emphasis on prevention is an excellent example [15]. Such a national strategic approach would require widespread and systematic consultation involving a range of stakeholders such as regulators, notably the HSE, researchers, practitioners, workers’ representatives and employers. Extensive collaboration would be needed for the background research and development as well as to monitor the implementation of the strategy. The multiple actions that would result might include an ‘Approved Code of Practice’ or an approach as in the ‘Management Standards’ [15].

Whilst it might be premature to pre-empt the conclusion of the development of such broad-based and wide-ranging initiatives, some considerations regarding a better paradigm for mitigating airborne infection risk in the workplace can already be highlighted on the basis of current evidence. The traditional ‘hierarchy of control’ as applied to airborne hazards needs adaptation for airborne infection hazards (e.g. the hazard is not amenable to substitution) and a ‘source/pathway/receptor’ approach is better suited [16,17]. Although the World Health Organisation had a flawed position which denied airborne transmission from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic [17], it has progressed and is developing risk assessment tools for ‘aerosolized infectious respiratory particles’ [18].

Lessons learnt during the pandemic regarding source control [17] such as ‘working from home’ would need to be built into codes of practice. Moreover, evidence needs to be reviewed, for example, regarding the extent to which respirators can limit transmission from infected people [19] since such mitigation could protect health workers exposed to the source [17,19] or help them fulfil legal duties [12,14] towards susceptible patients or co-workers. However, the main emphasis would have to be on pathway control to reduce exposure to airborne pathogens through building design and engineering means notably ventilation ‘as a primary tool for controlling transmission of respiratory pathogens’ [6,7] and other measures such as germicidal ultraviolet light [6]. These measures would likely need supplementation by statutory air quality standards [20] as surrogates for pathogen exposure—analogous to the long-standing but specific exposure limits for airborne chemical agents. Thus society would progressively achieve a ‘clean air revolution’ in workplaces, through a structural engineered resilience. This would add a much-needed dimension to the resilience [2] of institutions and organizations in response to a pandemic. The best efforts in controlling the sources and pathways of transmission of airborne pathogens should reduce the need for personal protection of the ‘receptor’, notably respiratory protective equipment [3,19] as the first or main line of defence. Guidance would be needed as to the role of specific types of respirators such as facepieces or powered devices [3], especially when they might remain indispensable during high exposure in the ‘near field’ [5,17]. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation [21] is refraining from advising on occupational health vaccination programmes and is deferring this consideration to HSCW employers. Therefore, it is incumbent on the relevant regulator, that is, the HSE, in consultation with stakeholders to include vaccination guidance as part of a national mitigation strategy.

The development and application of a national strategy to individual workplaces would rely heavily on a range of disciplines from microbiology to engineering. However, implementation in workplaces would be driven mainly by occupational health professionals such as hygienists and physicians as they have long-standing competencies and experience in applying control measures for airborne hazards [3] ranging from asbestos and crystalline silica to Legionella and Mycobacteria. The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that the uncritical application of fallacious public health guidance resulted in a lack of protection for workers [5,17,22] as well as others in workplaces such as patients [13] whose airborne exposure is inextricably linked to that of workers. Occupational health standards of control tend to be higher [17] than those in a public health context and can contribute to the good practice of infection control and public health [22] as part of the collaboration between specialists in all these disciplines. Occupational health specialists should be able to advise employers on aspects of employers’ legal obligations including with reference to those in workplaces who are not workers [12] as well as on adjustments relating to susceptible individuals that may be needed to comply with Equality legislation [12,14].

A ‘let them rip’ attitude towards the mitigation of the risk of common airborne infections in the workplace is unacceptable in terms of law, good occupational medicine practice and public health. A proactive strategy underpinned by a better paradigm is urgently needed for the benefit of society and especially to protect those vulnerable through significant exposure or those susceptible for reasons such as co-morbidity. Even if the will to do what is needed at a national level remains lacking, forward-looking workplaces and other stakeholders should still take proactive steps to mitigate the risk of airborne infection. Thus they would fulfil the duty of care to workers and others as well as improve the resilience and productive potential of workplaces.

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