"We're all ticked off." That's how writer Keith Hammonds
describes employees' attitude toward HR. Hammonds recently vented his irritation
in a story titled "Why We Hate HR" for Fast Company, which
appeared, to much uproar, in the August 2005 issue.
Fifty-eight percent of hiring managers say they leave some negotiating room
when extending initial offers, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com.
Delaware, New Hampshire, and Minnesota are the most employee-friendly states
in the country, according to a ranking by researchers from the Political Economy
Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts.
Manufacturing firms hired fewer workers in July than in June, yet they?re finding it difficult to recruit highly qualified applicants to fill key positions, according to survey results from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $11 million to settle a case in which it was accused of knowingly
using hundreds of undocumented workers hired by contractors to clean the floors
in its stores, the company and federal officials announced in statements.
Iowa loses more of its young, single, well-educated adults than any state except
North Dakota. That has led lawmakers to consider waiving the state income tax for everyone under 30.
New job growth in the manufacturing sector continued to slow in December and
is expected to stall further in January, according to indicators monitored in
a joint project by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Rutgers
University.
More than a quarter of the jobs created in the last year have gone to immigrants,
but the surge in hiring has yet to translate into higher wages for these
workers, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Productivity--as measured by worker output per hour-increased at an annual
rate of 3.5 percent in the first quarter of 2004, according to Bureau of Labor
Statistics.
