“American consumers pay significantly more for cellphone service than people in many other countries,” reports the New York Times. It’s in an article headlined “The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.” Although executives’ salaries have risen in most countries, relative to those of workers, in recent decades, the trend is more extreme in the U.S… The…
Tag: employment
How Ken’s using Guided Projects to continue building in-demand career skills
Meet Ken, a workforce management specialist and instructor who’s learning on Coursera while living in Ireland. In a recent interview, he spoke with us about how he’s using Guided Projects—Coursera’s new short, hands-on learning experiences—to continue building relevant career skills. Ken, thank you for taking the chance to talk with us! Can you start by […]
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New York Attorney General is Interviewing Amazon Employees About Warehouse Conditions as Retaliation Probe Continues
The New York attorney general’s office has interviewed Amazon workers from a handful of facilities in the state, as claims of employee retaliation become a central focus of its investigation into the company’s labor practices, CNBC reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a letter to Amazon in April saying…
Facebook Moderators Join Criticism of Zuckerberg Over Trump Stance
Pressure from Facebook staff is continuing to mount on Mark Zuckerberg over his policies towards posts by Donald Trump, with moderators joining those criticizing their boss for his stance. From a report: The moderators penned an open letter to their colleagues in support of virtual walkouts that have broken out at the company, after Zuckerberg refused to take down posts by…
Amazon To Offer Permanent Roles To 70% of 175,000 New US Hires
Amazon plans to offer permanent jobs to about 70% of the U.S. workforce it has hired temporarily to meet consumer demand during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters on Thursday. From a report: The world’s largest online retailer will begin telling 125,000 warehouse employees in June that they can keep their roles longer-term. The remaining 50,000 workers it has brought…
How Wesley went from Part-Time Cook to Full-Time IT Support Technician
My name is Wesley Mercado, and I live in Los Angeles, California. Before completing the Google IT Support Professional Certificate on the Coursera platform, I had no prior experience in IT Support. Now, I work as an IT Support Technician at a healthcare call center in Beverly Hills. I did not grow up as a […]
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Johns Hopkins trains 22,000 contact tracers on Coursera in the first week
By Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO Coursera On May 11, The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health launched a free course on Coursera, COVID-19 Contact Tracing, to help states expand their contact tracing capacity by training thousands of contact tracers. This is a crucial step in meeting their recommendation for more than 100,000 additional contact tracers […]
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Is Support Now Growing for a Universal Basic Income?
Economist Tyler Cowen and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (now the chairman of the nonprofit Renew Democracy Initiative) co-authored an opinion piece this week in Bloomberg arguing that “a pandemic is providing a tragic preview of some of the conditions UBI was conceived to address.” Though they worry about the cost of such a program, “And, though there are some…
US Unemployment Rate Soars To 14.7%, the Worst Since the Depression Era
The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 14.7 percent in April, the highest level since the Great Depression, as many businesses shut down or severely curtailed operations to try and limit the spread of the deadly coronavirus. From a report: The Labor Department said 20.5 million people abruptly lost their jobs, wiping out a decade of employment gains in a single month….
Finland’s 2-Year Test of Universal Basic Income Concludes that it Doesn’t Seem To Disincentivise Working and Benefits Recipients’ Mental and Financial Wellbeing
The world’s most robust study of universal basic income has concluded that it boosts recipients’ mental and financial well-being, as well as modestly improving employment. From a report: Finland ran a two-year universal basic income study in 2017 and 2018, during which the government gave 2000 unemployed people aged between 25 and 58 monthly payments with no strings attached. The payments…