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John Thain's Driver Made $230,000: Report
Tweet Share on Facebook January 22, 2009 Comment (11)John Thain resigned from Bank of America today. But I really feel for John Thain's driver, who made more than a Supreme Court Justice for one year of work, according to documents dug up by Charlie Gasparino and reported at the Daily Beast. That's a job that will be hard to replace.
Thain was named CEO of Merrill Lynch in December 2007--a rocky time to start renovating the office with such staples as an $87,000 rug and an $18,000 desk, Gasparino reports.
An excerpt:
At the time, Thain was preaching the virtues of cost control, telling employees to reduce expenses including car services, entertainment and travel. In addition to the personal expenses on his office, documents show Thain paid his driver $230,000 for one year’s work, which included the driver's $85,000 salary and bonus of $18,000, and another $128,000 in over-time pay. Drivers of top executives are often paid about half that amount.
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Obama Gets Tough With White House Staffers
Tweet Share on Facebook January 21, 2009 Comment (8)President Obama on Day 1: He's freezing pay for White House staffers who make more than $100,000-- including chief of staff, national security adviser and press secretary, according to the AP.
New rules that prevent staffers from working on issues for which they've lobbied, prohibit taking gifts from lobbyists, and ban lobbying the administration for two years after leaving the payroll, are intended to improve ethics and also to "do something to make government trustworthy in the eyes of the American people," Obama said today.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement:
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Designer Jason Wu's Unusual Career Arc
Tweet Share on Facebook January 21, 2009 Comment (4)Jason Wu, the 26-year-old designer of Michelle Obama's ivory inaugural gown, has not traveled the typical career path for fashion designers.
Wu started his career designing dresses (and hair and makeup) for dolls at toymaker Integrity Toys. Wu was in high school when he first submitted a design to Integrity through a company-sponsored contest and he continued with the doll-maker through design school and beyond. It's an unusual way to launch a fashion career, but Wu seems not at all fazed by the circumstances of his early years (so often we tend to apologize for departing from the standard career path).
He told WWD three years ago, "I didn't know doing dolls was going to become a career. ... If I hadn't done it then, I probably would have started in fashion earlier, but I don't think the collection would have been as mature."
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Country Has New President, Same Market
Tweet Share on Facebook January 20, 2009 CommentHere in Washington today, the massive crowd filing onto the National Mall seemed certain of the power of change--momentous, all-consuming change. But on Wall Street, today's mood was a bit different.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 332 points today on worries about the health of the nation's banking sector. Wall Streeters apparently couldn't afford to be swept up by the new family's entry into the White House.
From the AP: "Traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange paused at times to watch the inauguration ceremony and Obama's remarks, but the transition of power didn't erase investors' intensifying concerns about the struggling economy."
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Ad Association CEO: Laid Off Employee Sent Hoax E-mail
Tweet Share on Facebook January 16, 2009 Comment (5)At first it appeared yesterday that Jeff Haley, CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, had sent an E-mail to the association's employees indicating that three executives had been laid off because of their inflated salaries, "'particularly when those individuals have added so little value to this organization,'" the E-mail stated, according to Advertising Age.
But Haley told AdAge he didn't write the E-mail, noting instead that it had been sent a couple of hours after the association had laid off five employees and he thought it was likely created by one of them.
RAB expects to seek "legal remedies," Mediaweek reports.
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When a Sweatshop Job is Your Ticket Out
Tweet Share on Facebook January 16, 2009 Comment (2)In the U.S., sweatshop work represents the very worst sort of the labor--the exploitative, lawless kind that pays pennies for long hours of tedious work in potentially dangerous environments.
For that very reason, Nicholas Kristof's piece on sweatshops in the New York Times is essential reading. Kristof writes from an area in Phnom Penh, where families live atop steamy garbage dumps and prowl among the refuse for plastic that can be recycled for cash (5 cents a pound).
To these families, "a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children," Kristof writes.
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Librarians' New Job Title: Career Counselor
Tweet Share on Facebook January 15, 2009 Comment (2)I'm a major proponent of library usage. I have library cards in my wallet issued from the last three cities in which I've lived, and, while I haven't kept track, I can assure you that those cards have prevented the other cards (credit, debit) from some abuse. The really great libraries hold more free books, British miniseries DVDs, foreign language CDs, and quiet corners than one could ever make room for at home.
It's a no-brainer that money-conscious job seekers are availing themselves of the library's many great assets. Today's WSJ reports that library branches throughout the country are being inundated with job seekers who are looking for help in the form of career advice books, time on the computers, free Wi-Fi, and the librarians, themselves.
An excerpt:
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Gannett Requires Week of Unpaid Leave For Most of Its 31,000 Workers
Tweet Share on Facebook January 15, 2009 Comment (1)Most of Gannett's 31,000 workers will be taking a week off in the first quarter--unpaid. The furlough is intended to prevent layoffs at the country's largest newspaper company.
Editor and Publisher has some of Gannett's editors' responses here. No surprise that Laura Rehrmann, managing editor of the Washington Bureau, reportedly told staffers in an E-mail: No, you can't take a furlough week next week." (Inauguration week--bad time for an unpaid vacation).
I've written a couple of times recently about how few companies seem to make cost-cutting efforts in regards to wages, instead choosing layoffs-- which, according to some research, may actually prolong recessions.
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Jobless Claims: Pay No Mind
Tweet Share on Facebook January 15, 2009 CommentThe number of people filing initial claims for unemployment benefits rose last week to 524,000 from a revised 470,000 a week earlier, according to the Labor Department.
This is a bit higher than economists expected but it isn't much of a surprise, given that lackluster holiday sales hit retailers hard and the ongoing recession is affecting a broad swath of industries. Nevertheless, this particular piece of data may be something that we can ignore for now. Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR, says in a note this morning that "the impossibility of correctly adjusting for varying seasonal patterns makes these data virtually useless on a weekly basis during much of December and all of January."
The weekly jobless claims data is probably not useful until the first or second week of February, he says, adding: "We encourage our readers to ignore anyone who attempts to use any single result during this period as evidence of anything."
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Update: Island Job Frenzy a Sign of the Times
Tweet Share on Facebook January 14, 2009 Comment (5)If you've heard about the seemingly dreamy $104,000 "island caretaker" gig being offered by Tourism Queensland and you've thought: "Hey, what have I got to lose? I'll apply"--you're not alone. This is a global recession, after all, and there's no shortage of island lovers on any continent.
There were so many interested applicants yesterday that the website (islandreefjob.com--where video applications must be uploaded) crashed and officials were forced to setup a second server, according to the Australian. The newspaper reports that the inability to access the site created near panic among job seekers--many of whom have called embassies, government offices and news outlets.
The only way to get this job--a six-month promotional deal meant to drum up interest in Queensland tourism--is with a minute-long video application uploaded to the site.
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