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Human & Civil Rights Agencies

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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.

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...

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...