I’ve done a few posts on this subject. My most recent one was last week dealing with the pink slip epidemic. Mike Maslanka also had a post last week on this subject. It contains excellent advice and provides a good tip to start the week.

Well, they’re not intentionally arguing for universal health care, but their handling of individual health insurance policies are making the argument for them. According to the New York Times, all of them charge women significantly more than menfor individual health insurance policies providing identical coverage. This has become a big deal, because so many people have lost their jobs which provided group health insurance and are now looking for individual policies.

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That’s the title of a recent Business Week article. It seems that the epidemic has already been with us for several weeks, if not months. Business Week predicts it’ll get a lot worse, with job cuts being made “across broad swaths of the economy.” The New York Times agrees. The only industries likely to resist the epidemic are health care and energy.

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I turn to one of my fellow bloggers for this week’s tip. The Laconic Law Blog had a post last week about a subject getting a lot of attention during these days of economic woe. If our economic crisis continues, one wonders if severance packages will go the way of personal contact with employees.

The president and vice president of a supermarket in Brooklyn have been accused of paying no wages to some baggers who received only tips, failing to pay workers the minimum wage, and refusing to pay overtime. The New York Times reported that the two executives were arrested for cheating employees and falsifying business records filed with the state.

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For weeks, we’ve listened to politicians and business tycoons tell us why the historic bailout of banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and other businesses was necessary. Without it, doom awaited — for Wall Street and Main Street. So, the bailout occurred. What happened first, however, was that financial and business leaders recklessly bailed out on their responsibility.

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As reported by the Washington Post, the bar-tailed godwit, “a plump shorebird with a recurved bill,” has set a new record for nonstop flight. Scientists who’ve been monitoring the birds say that godwits can fly 7,242 miles without stopping in their annual fall migration from Alaska to New Zealand. The birds fly for five to nine days without rest, although a few stop for refueling on South Pacific Islands. Though the godwits’ journey could be wind-aided, their feat of flight is unprecedented.

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Day laborers are nothing new. They stand around in parking lots at stores like Home Depot waiting for prospective employment on a daily basis. A contractor or some other employer in need of day labor comes by and picks up a few, maybe quite a few. That’s the way it used to be. Today, day laborers are pretty much unemployed.

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Layoffs are dominating the news, not a demand for new workers.  But, let’s face it, as bad as things are right now, there are open positions — some of them good ones.  Thus, recruiters aren’t completely out of business, and all employers have a need to fill certain jobs.

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President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Chairman Bernanke, and members of Congress have taken bold action to bail out Wall Street. They did it, of course, for the sake of Main Street.

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In a Washington Post article by Steven Pearlstein, it’s suggested that stupidity, not greed, should be blamed for our current financial mess.  Pearlstein concedes:  “Wall Street is nothing if not an organized system of greed, a high-stakes game in which the object is to take advantage of customers and counterparties by buying pieces of paper from them at less than they are really worth and selling them to others for more than they are worth.”  But since greed is a basic premise of a capitalist economy (he apparently believes we still have one), it’s okay.

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Since my disclosure of The Man Gene and my inclination to bring it up everytime there’s something in the news that seems to have been caused by The Man Gene (click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), I’ve received various reactions. Some think I’m kidding. (I’m not.) Some think I’m brilliant. (Not that either.) Some, usually women, view The Man Gene theory as incendiary. (Possible.) Some, usually men, find it helpful in battling against The Man Gene’s proclivities. (Hope so.)

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Sorry, but I’ve been thinking again.  When you’re an employee, regardless at what level, it’s critical to know who your boss is.   Sometimes, you think you do, and then something happens to let you know he’s not the boss.  He doesn’t call any shots.  Someone else does.  The current economic meltdown has much to say about this important employment principle. 

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A month ago, one of your employees told you he was retiring at the end of the year.  It wasn’t a surprise.  He’d mentioned the possibility before.  There are emails back and forth between you and the employee confirming his decision.  You’ve begun the “retirement paperwork.”  You’re interviewing for a replacement.  A retirement party is even in the works.  Today, he tells you he’s changed his mind.

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Although Wall Street’s CEOs and other top executives have been getting all the attention recently, there are lessons to be learned from the more regular employees. After all, not everyone is a millionaire, since like every other industry, financial institutions need a lot of people doing a lot of different things to run their businesses. These folks don’t have golden parachutes, and about 120,000 of them have already lost their jobs. While the shameless big dogs continue to fight to protect their annual eight-figure comp packages, the regular folks are coming to grips with reality.

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I’m not an economist. I’m not running for anything. I’ve never been on Wall Street. But I’ve been thinking again.

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I haven’t been shy about criticizing executives for making too much money. We’ve seen one example after another for a long time. Lately, we’ve seen the results of what this kind of out-of-balance executive comp can have. The current economic crisis isn’t due entirely, of course, to executives’ greed and boards of directors’ failure to grasp reality, but these things are all part of the toxic mixture of what led us, we are told, to the brink of financial disaster and what puts workplaces of all kinds and their employees in a continuing precarious situation.

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I’ve been thinking.  And I’ve concluded that there are just a lot of things that don’t make sense.

Politics — Millions of dollars are being raised and spent for politicians to get elected.  I think I read the other day that Senator Barak Obama had raised $66 million in August, a new monthly record. And that’s the tip of the iceberg.  All the candidates, presidential and otherwise, talk about what they’re going to do for the middle class, the working class, the poor. How about just giving to them what has to be, in total, the billions of dollars they’ve raise for attack ads? Does anyone else think it’s a little screwy for all these candidates to be raising the kind of money they’re raising to help themselves, while merely talking about helping others.

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It’s tough to fear the loss of a job.  It’s particularly tough when it’s the result of bad management by those who’ve gotten rich.  This scenario is playing out now in the case of Lehman Brothers.  Lehman has filed for bankruptcy, meaning that fear has turned into reality for thousands of employees and the loss of much of their savings which had been placed in Lehman stock. 

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The fast lane is something we all dream about, sort of like the lottery–at least, most of us.  Excitement.  Money.  Private jets.  Big houses.  Fancy cars.  Travel.  Death.  Well, maybe not death.  But, truth be told, the fast lane can cause death, particularly in bad times.  Scott Coles, the now deceased head of Mortgages Ltd in Phoenix, was going so fast that he apparently lost control and killed himself.  He may be worth thinking about for a minute. (more…)