The League of Iowa
Human & Civil Rights Agencies


Category: Employment

New jobless claims filed last week fall 29,000

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 11:16 AM on March 04, 2010 Comments comments (0)

New jobless claims filed last week dropped 29,000, to 469,000, slightly better than forecasters expected, the government said moments ago. Forecasters expected last week's new jobless claims to come in at 470,000. The four-week moving average for new jobless claims, which smooths out the week-to-week volatility, dropped 3,250 to 470,450. Continuing claims last week dropped to 4.5 million from 4.6 million the prior week.

 

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Will $15 Billion Aid Job Growth?

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 10:38 AM on March 04, 2010 Comments comments (0)

House Adopts $15 Billion Plan to Spur Job Growth

By: Carl Hulse

Published: March 4, 2010 in the New York Times

 

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved a $15 billion measure intended to spur job creation by granting tax breaks to businesses that hire workers, as Democrats, bracing for new jobless figures, tried to show that Congress ...

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What States and Cities Are Doing to Help Small Businesses

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 08:31 PM on March 03, 2010 Comments comments (0)

While Washington debates how to help the country’s struggling small businesses, states and municipalities have stepped up with an array of initiatives to stanch closings and save jobs. The local approaches are as varied as subsidizing wages for new hires, running a $100,000 regional business-plan competition and giving out grants to help small manufacturers reposition themselves. Some states and cities are using federal stimulus dollars, and others are mixing federal, state and private ...

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$15 Billion but Not a Lot of Sense

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 08:50 PM on March 02, 2010 Comments comments (0)

The Senate has passed a $15 billion package that is aimed at helping small businesses. There are two key parts. One is the extension of section 179 of the tax code, which allows up to $250,000 of capital expenditures to be expensed immediately instead of being depreciated over time. This will motivate some companies to make capital expenditures that will reduce their tax bills, which is good for the economy. The other part is the suspension of FICA payments for the rest of the year for new hi...

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Myth-Busting: Hiring Workers With Disabilities

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 03:04 PM on March 01, 2010 Comments comments (0)

Industry reports consistently rate workers with disabilities as average or above average when it comes to employee performance, attendance, retention and safety. So why are so many people with disabilities unemployed? The No. 1 barrier preventing many companies from hiring people with disabilities continues to be "attitudes at all corporate levels," according to a report published in the February edition of T + D magazine, the trade publication for the American Society for Training & Deve...

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How Can You Create an Accommodation Mindset?

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 03:15 PM on February 19, 2010 Comments comments (0)

Balan Nur had worked for Alamo Rent-A-Car for two years, wearing a headscarf as part of her Islamic religious practice during Ramadan. But after 9/11, she was told that Alamo's dress code prohibited head coverings, and she was subsequently fired for refusing to remove it. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought a suit on her behalf, alleging religious discrimination. Result: The court found in favor of Nur and eventually granted her more than $280,000 in damages. "No person should...

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In a First, Women Surpass Men on U.S. Payrolls

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 08:38 PM on February 05, 2010 Comments comments (0)

For the first time, women have outnumbered men on the nation’s payrolls. The Labor Department revised on Friday its previous estimates of nonfarm payroll employees, the monthly aggregate employment series that gets the most media attention. The most recent jobs estimates by gender are for January. Before adjusting for seasonal changes, 64.2 million payroll employees last month were women, and only 63.4 million were men.

 

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Fairfield's first female top cop keeps focus on job, not status

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 08:52 AM on February 01, 2010 Comments comments (0)

Fairfield, Ia. - It's almost easy to lose Julie Harvey, Fairfield's new police chief, in the big chair behind her desk. Easy, that is, until she breaks into a wide grin and laughs. Harvey, who spent six years in the Army and 16 years with the Fairfield Police Department before becoming chief, is not the kind of officer who feels the need to meet every visitor with a stone face.

 

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Review seeks changes in Iowa training program

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 08:37 PM on January 28, 2010 Comments comments (0)

An internal review obtained by The Associated Press is calling for changes to Iowa's system of training new workers after finding the program is the most expensive in the nation. The review by the Department of Economic Development found that Iowa spent $62 million on the Industrial New Jobs Training Program in 2007. That's $10 million more than was spent by second-ranked California. "Iowa paid on average $13,000 for each new worker's training costs, national average was $525 per worker," the...

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Disabled men didn't work for Henry's, company says

Posted by Iowa Civil Rights Commission at 12:48 PM on January 28, 2010 Comments comments (0)

Henry's Turkey Service is denying allegations that it employed the mentally retarded men who lived in an Atalissa bunkhouse for most of the past 35 years. The company filed court papers last week arguing that the Atalissa men "were all employees of West Liberty Foods while working at the West Liberty plant." Henry's Turkey Service, a Texas labor broker, sent hundreds of mentally retarded men to labor camps scattered throughout the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. One of those labor camps...

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