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Noteworthy News A special Wall Street Journal report on executive pay finds that the median value of company shares owned by CEOs was $9.85 million at the close of fiscal 1999. That was up from $8.4 million in 1998. (The report is included in the April 6 issue of the Journal.) An internal analysis by the Canadian communications-equipment manufacturer, Nortel Networks, finds that satisfied workers add to the corporate bottom line. The analysis (reported in the above-cited special section of the Wall Street Journal) looked at the relationship between profitability and responses to an employee satisfaction survey. On a scale of 1 to 5, a 0.2 increase in the average response to questions about productivity and working conditions was associated with a 6.8 percent increase in profitability. A 0.2 increase in the average response to questions about general satisfaction and a sense of being valued translated into a 4.5 percent increase in profitability. The Labor Department’s Consumer Expenditure Survey for 1998 shows that average annual expenditures for a four-person household were just over $47,000. A Cornell University study cited in the March 28 Wall Street Journal finds that overtime averages nearly 7 hours a week for unionized workers. One in five work 11 hours or more. Workers putting in large amounts of overtime are more likely to report “severe” work-family conflicts, while those required to work mandatory overtime “significantly higher” levels of stress, alcohol use, and absenteeism. Also on the topic of overtime, research published in the Department of Labor’s Monthly Labor Review finds unprecedented growth in overtime during the current economic expansion. Compared with previous expansions, manufacturing employers in the 1990s were more likely to increase overtime hours for their current workers than to hire new workers. In 1997, only about 56 percent of blue collar and service employees in medium and large private establishments had dental benefits of any type. (1997 is the latest year for which benefits data are available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) |
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Labor Law, Unions, Employment in |
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