Disaster Preparedness Standards Proposed for Businesses

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will adopt standards to help the private sector be better prepared for disasters and emergencies. DHS is accepting comments on the proposed standards through Nov. 15, 2009.
DHS published a notice in the Oct. 16, 2009, Federal Register seeking comment on the three new standards that would be adopted under the Voluntary Private Sector Preparedness Accreditation and Certification Program (known as PS-Prep). PS-Prep was mandated by Congress with the passage of the Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007. Businesses will receive emergency preparedness certification from a DHS accreditation system that would help businesses enhance operational resilience, business continuity management, and disaster and emergency management.
The proposed standards were developed by the National Fire Protection Association, the British Standards Institution and the American Society for Industrial Security and were selected from a field of 25 proposed standards for their scalability, balance of interest and relevance to PS-Prep, according to a DHS news release.
“Preparedness is a shared responsibility, and everyone—including businesses, universities and non-profit organizations—has a role to play,” said DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in the news release. “Ensuring our private sector partners have the information and training they need to respond to disasters will strengthen our efforts to build a culture of preparedness nationwide.”
DHS also is working on classifications and certifications for small businesses, according to the release.
More information about the three proposed standards:
• Language from the National Fire Protection Association establishes a common set of criteria for preparedness, disaster management, emergency management and business continuity. This standard was chosen because of its focus on planning and preparation in anticipation of a disaster and does not prescribe a program development process, according to the Federal Register notice.
• Language from the British Standards Institution defines requirements for a management systems approach to business continuity and integrates risk management disciplines and processes. It was chosen because it provides a management systems approach to business continuity and integrates risk management disciplines and processes. In addition, it addresses business-to-business and business-to-customer dealings to strengthen business resilience.
• Language from the American Society for Industrial Security defines requirements for a management systems approach to organizational resilience. It encompasses risk management mechanisms and follows a plan-do-check-act approach associated with other International Standard organization management system-based standards, the notice stated.
After DHS considers comments on the proposed standards, it will publish another notice in the Federal Register on the ones it will adopt. To comment, visit the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov.

Despite recovery, employers aren't ready to hire

Job hunters will face long odds well into next year. As the unemployment rate inches closer to 10 percent, most businesses are nowhere close to hiring again. Uncertain about prospects for recovery - the economy's and their own - employers cut 263,000 jobs in September, the government said Friday. Unemployment crept up to 9.8 percent.
As the economy slowly turns around, sales are slowly growing and many companies are starting to make money again. But they're doing it by cutting costs, squeezing more work out of fewer employees and relying on part-timers and cheap overseas labor. Until companies are confident the recovery is here to stay, they will probably keep laying off workers. The economy lost 62,000 more jobs in September than in August, and the unemployment rate notched up from 9.7 percent to a new 26-year high.
Most economists say the recession is probably over. But the recovery isn't robust enough to embolden businesses to hire again.
"Fear is a large factor for many companies," said Michael Williams, dean of the graduate school of business at Touro College in New York. "What happens after the government's stimuli end? Does the recovery morph into something durable, or is there an abyss on the other side?"
President Barack Obama called the jobless figures a sobering reminder that progress to reverse the recession will come in fits and starts. Employers are expected to continue cutting payrolls for six to nine more months. Economists think the jobless rate will go as high as 10.5 percent around the middle of next year before declining gradually. It could take three or four more years for unemployment to fall to normal levels. The worst recession since the Great Depression has already claimed 7.2 million jobs, and analysts figure 750,000 more jobs could disappear over the next six months. The drumbeat of job losses is creating fear that Americans won't start spending again and the recovery may fizzle. Some worry the economy might succumb to a "double dip" recession - meaning it would stop growing and start shrinking again.
After the recession of 1981 and 1982, the economy added 1.2 million jobs in the first six months of recovery. By contrast, after the 2001 recession, the economy lost 1.1 million jobs before unemployment peaked two years later. It was dubbed a jobless recovery.
Economic historian John Steel Gordon says this could be a jobless recovery, too, with businesses wringing more work out of the employees they still have and relying on part-time and overseas help. "It's actually worse now," he said. "Companies aren't going to hire until it becomes obvious we're back in a lasting growth cycle." Until then, economists think, the few industries creating jobs will probably include health care, education, legal services, data processing and transportation. And early next year, the federal government will be hiring for the 2010 census. In the last economic recovery, the financial industry drove job growth, but that probably won't happen this time. Job growth should also be slow in construction, manufacturing and retail. All told, 15.1 million Americans are out of work - twice as many as at the start of the recession. Counting laid-off workers who have settled for part-time work or just given up, the unemployment rate is 17 percent, the highest on record since 1994.
People are also staying out of work longer. The number of people jobless for six months or longer jumped to a record 5.4 million. That's more than one-third of the unemployed, a record.
A key Obama adviser noted that while the job losses in September were the most since July, layoffs are way down from a recession high of 741,000 in January. A House bill to add 13 weeks of unemployment benefits for people in states where the jobless rate is 8.5 percent of higher has stalled in the Senate. Hundreds of thousands of people already have exhausted their benefits or are about to. The September unemployment rate would have been higher - perhaps over 10 percent - if not for the exodus of 571,000 people from the work force, economists said. Many of them were so frustrated over a lack of work that they simply abandoned the search. Older workers who are laid off are also dropping out and filing for Social Security benefits at a faster-than-expected pace, the government says. Applications for retirement benefits are 23 percent higher than last year. Disability claims are up about 20 percent. Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, says he's optimistic the recovery won't fizzle. But he says it will "jagged and uneven," with more pain ahead for jobseekers.
Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2009985985_apuseconomy.html

Public option still alive as health care reform advances

A little over a week after the Senate Finance Committee passed a health care reform bill without a public insurance plan, that option appears to be back on the table. “At the end of the day we will have a public option,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters in response to questions about the health care legislation making its way through the House of Representatives. Details of the public plan were still being worked out, Pelosi said.
The idea of a government-run health insurance plan appears to be gaining ground in the Senate as well, although the versions being discussed at press time fall short of nationwide, Medicare-like coverage. One idea is to make the public plan a fallback option, implemented only if other health care reforms in the legislation fail to expand insurance coverage.
Another proposal would create a government plan but let states opt out, while a third would allow states to participate in the federal government’s plan or try out plans of their own.
Congress remains divided on the issue. President Obama contends that a public option would be the best way to ensure that there is competition in the health insurance market.
Many Democrats agree, and they feel their case has been strengthened by a preliminary Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report indicating that a public insurance option with provider payment rates pegged at 5% above Medicare reimbursement rates (known as Medicare Plus 5) would provide greater cost savings than other public option plans and allow the total cost of the health care system overhaul to come in below the president’s target of $900 billion over 10 years.
House Democrats recently expressed confidence that they had enough votes to pass a health care overhaul bill that includes a robust public health insurance option. And some public opinion polls have showed support for a government-run insurance plan.
Yet most Republicans (and some Democrats) are opposed to any public option, arguing that a government-backed plan would have unfair advantages over plans offered by private insurers and would come to dominate the market. Some contend that a public option will also drive up the deficit, without slowing the rise in overall health care costs.
In addition, they cite a recent report that seems to support their position. Conducted for the Office of the Actuary, which handles long-range cost estimates for Medicare, the report said the nation’s health care spending will rise faster with the proposed reform legislation than it would without it.
America currently spends about $2.5 trillion a year on health care. The report says that figure will approach $4.7 trillion a year by 2019 if the legislation does not pass and nearly $4.8 trillion if it does.
The Obama administration called the report out of date, maintaining that it does not reflect the most recent versions of health care legislation that are under consideration.
Meanwhile, the return of the public option to the table caught some by surprise, since the issue had seemed all but dead just a week earlier. The health overhaul measure passed by the Senate Finance Committee on October 13 did not include a public option.
That version of the legislation, backed by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, was a 10-year, $829 billion plan that would require nearly all Americans to have health insurance coverage. To make that possible, the plan would expand eligibility for Medicaid and create new tax subsidies for those purchasing coverage on their own.
Though that plan did not include a government-run health insurance option, it would create a network of nonprofit health cooperatives that would compete with private insurers. The CBO estimated that the bill would ensure that 94% of nonelderly Americans are covered by health insurance in 2019, up from 83% in 2010.
The Senate Finance Committee bill was significant in that it attracted one Republican vote, from Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. The other nine Republicans on the panel voted against the bill.
Although hardly a model of bipartisanship, the bill’s one Republican vote contrasted with the health legislation that passed every other House and Senate committee, none of which were backed by a single Republican.
The Senate Finance Committee bill won some praise from the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), which counts Walgreen Co. as a member.
“RILA applauds the committee’s inclusion of prevention and wellness incentives in the bill,” said John Emling, senior vice president for government affairs. “These incentives are critical to shifting America’s health care delivery system from the simple treatment of disease toward the prevention of disease.”
The association added that the retail industry’s support for reform was contingent on the reduction of systematic costs, the preservation of the employer-based system, and changes to the proposed enrollment requirements that address the needs of high-turnover industries like retail.
Source: http://www.chaindrugreview.com/inside-this-issue/news/10-26-2009/public-option-still-alive-as-health-care-reform-advances

Military FMLA Leave: Qualifying Exigency Leave

Employees already eligible for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) with family in the military are entitled to two new forms of FMLA leave benefits -- qualifying exigency (QE) leave and military caregiver leave (MCL). The rules for employer coverage (employing 50 employees within a 75-mile radius) and employee eligibility (they've worked 12 months and 1,250 hours) are the same as for traditional FMLA leave. Of help to employers, the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) November 2008 rules also created a required notice and certification process similar to what applies to traditional FMLA leave.
On the other hand, the military FMLA leave provisions expanded the reasons employees may take leave, which family members are eligible for leave, and for some employees, the length of time they may be absent. For example, to give meaning to the new military provisions, the DOL lifted the age and disability limitations for "son" and "daughter" as they apply to military leave. As with traditional FMLA leave, however, employers may ask an employee for reasonable documentation or, when proof is unavailable, a statement of the family relationship.

U.S. District Court Upholds E-Verify System

U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the U.S. government in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the E-Verify system (Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Napolitano). This means that beginning September 8, 2009, federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to use the E-Verify system to ensure their employees are legally authorized to work in the United States. The requirement is designed to stop federal contractors and subcontractors from hiring illegal immigrants.
The E-Verify system is a federal government online database program that allows employers to verify employment eligibility by electronically comparing employee information taken from the Employment Eligibility Verification Form (Form I-9) against the records in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) databases. The system, which facilitates compliance with federal immigration laws and is currently voluntary for employers, is jointly operated by the DHS and the SSA and is overseen by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The E-Verify program has continued to face opposition from immigrant advocacy groups and business groups that assert the databases used by the E-Verify system are full of errors. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the business groups strongly opposed to the E-Verify system, initiated the lawsuit against the government in an effort to prevent the program from becoming mandatory for federal contractors and subcontractors.
The U.S. District Court in Maryland held that requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify doesn’t violate federal immigration law. Specifically, the court noted that the rule doesn’t require any person or entity to use the system since organizations and individuals voluntarily decide whether to become government contractors and subcontractors. The court also noted that the President and the U.S. government had the authority to enact the requirement.
Although the Bush administration attempted to make E-Verify mandatory for federal contractors and subcontractors during its final months, the start date for them to begin using E-Verify has been delayed multiple times. When President Barack Obama took office, he ordered additional review of the system. After six months, the Obama administration and the DHS decided to push ahead with the expansion of E-Verify.
After the E-Verify rule takes effect on September 8, employers that are awarded federal contracts that include the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) E-Verify clause will have to verify the employment eligibility of all their employees (including current workers) through E-Verify. However, federal contractors may not use E-Verify to verify current employees until the rule becomes effective and they are awarded a contract that includes the FAR E-Verify clause.

Women take over job market

Women are on the verge of outnumbering men in the workforce for the first time, a historic reversal caused by long-term changes in women's roles and massive job losses for men during this recession.
Women held 49.83% of the nation's 132 million jobs in June and they're gaining the vast majority of jobs in the few sectors of the economy that are growing, according to the most recent numbers available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The gender transformation is especially remarkable in local government's 14.6 million-person workforce. Cities, schools, water authorities and other local jurisdictions have cut 86,000 men from payrolls during the recession — while adding 167,000 women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Unemployment among men isn't going to last forever," says University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan. "People will move from construction and manufacturing to industries that are creating new jobs." Mulligan expects the portion of jobs held by women to peak slightly above 50% this year, then drop below half when the economy recovers and more men find work.

Google testing HR algorithm

Google thinks it will be able to tell which of its employees are going to quit, maybe even before they know.
The company revealed Tuesday that it is using its fabled data-collection and analysis powers for more than just search results. The Wall Street Journal reported that Google has developed an algorithm for assessing the number of employees likely to turn their back on the free lunches and multicolored walls of Google's Mountain View, Calif., campus in hopes of convincing the best of those folks to stay.
A few years ago, Silicon Valley workers were flocking to Google, and the company was hiring like mad. The world has changed, however, and Google is no longer automatically seen as the best place for a budding young coder or entrepreneur to hone their talents--especially as the stock price has declined since its late 2007 heights.
As a result, Google has seen recent defections to companies du jour such as Twitter and Facebook, and is determined to retain its best people, according to a company representative quoted by the Journal. The algorithm is still in testing (insert joke about Google's beta culture here), but the idea seems to be to identify disengaged employees before they lose interest in staying with Google.
It's almost like a kinder, gentler version of the "forced ranking" Six Sigma program that encouraged companies to regularly fire the bottom 10 percent of their employees to get rid of the malcontents. Google's not going down that road, but nor is it shy about using quantitative analysis to categorize its workforce.
The algorithm works by taking data from staff pay history, promotion history and employee reviews and appraisals of its 20,000 staff worldwide.The programme is still in the test phases, so the company is not ready to share information about the technical workings of the system, but a spokesman told HR magazine: "As anyone who has observed Google over the years knows, we are serious about keeping our employees happy.
"The work we do in predictive attrition helps us find situations that may increase the likelihood of some ‘Googlers' leaving the company so that managers and HR staff can work on avoiding those very situations. "These efforts don't identify specific people at risk of leaving but instead focus on the less obvious factors that may contribute to the decision to leave the company."Google does not intend to use the algorithm to prevent employees who wish to leave the company from doing so, but hopes to find out which employees are feeling demotivated so training and recognition can be used more strategically.