A new survey from Indeed.com finds most workers saying
it’s
important that their employer offers reproductive health benefits.
In a survey of more than 1,000 full-time
employees, 89% said it is important to them that the company they work for
provides reproductive health benefits, with 43% indicating that the company
they work for has announced the addition of abortion care assistance to their
benefits package in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s recent reversal of Roe v. Wade. According to
Indeed, only 17% of respondents said they had access to those benefits via
their employer before the recent Supreme Court ruling.
Among workers who reported this addition to
their benefits:
- 73% said their new benefits include financial assistance for abortion care services.
- 63% indicated their companies have provided actionable steps for how employees can leverage the new policy.
- 60% said their new benefits provide financial assistance for travel expenses.
- 54% reported that abortion care assistance is provided only to full-time employees within their organization.
- 32% said their new benefits cover time off to
receive care.
“With a sizable percentage of the people
surveyed reporting access to new reproductive health benefits, companies are
navigating new and complicated territory,” Joceylne Gafner, a content writer at Indeed.com, wrote. “The
health and privacy of employees is at stake, and our survey suggests that, for many employees, the
processes currently in place to access their newly added benefits may put both
at risk.”
Facebook Memo Urges Managers to Call Out Low Performers
In a move that one report called “a dramatic change of tone for the
social media giant [that] once set the tone for the relaxed and laid-back
attitude that characterized Silicon Valley,” an internal Meta memo instructed
engineering managers to report low performers to human resources.
Sent by Maher Saba, the head
of engineering at the company more
commonly known as Facebook,
the memo directed managers to report anyone who “needs support” to HR by 5 p.m.
on Monday, July 11.
“If a direct report is coasting or is a low
performer, they are not who we need; they are failing this company,” Saba
wrote. “As a manager, you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative
for Meta.”
The memo was distributed “as Facebook’s value
has plummeted in the past months, declining nearly 52% since the start of
2022,” wrote the Daily Mail’s Alex Oliveira, “amidst an ongoing reckoning
of the company’s privacy policies that has gutted its longtime method of making
money by selling user data.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees
during a June 2022 companywide call that he expected to reduce engineering
hiring plans by at least 30% as a way to cut costs.
“The memo from Saba appeared to be one of the
first steps in that process,” Oliveira wrote, “with many employees expressing
fear that their jobs may be on the line in the face of layoffs.”
California $18 Minimum Wage Initiatives Qualifies for 2024 Ballot
An initiative to increase the state of California’s minimum wage from $15 to $18 by
2026 for all employers has qualified for the state’s 2024 election ballot,
after missing the deadline to make the ballot in 2022.
The ballot initiative would increase the
state minimum wage over several years until it reaches $18 by 2026 for all
employers in the state, which last increased the minimum wage in 2016. The new ballot initiative would
increase the minimum wage at different speeds, depending on whether an employer
has 26 or more employees, or 25 or fewer workers.
For employers with 26 or more workers, the
minimum wage would reach $18 on Jan. 1, 2025. For organizations with 25 or
fewer workers, the minimum wage would reach $18 on Jan. 1, 2026. The minimum
wage would be tied to inflation after reaching $18.
Joe Sanberg, the Los Angeles-based investor and
anti-poverty activist who filed the ballot initiative, noted the urgency for
raising the state’s minimum wage again. “The time is now, because the pandemic
has heightened the people’s understanding of the realities so many Californians
face,” he said in a statement. “Cost of living is rising faster and
faster...but wages haven’t increased commensurately.”
The initiative has been met with some
opposition. For example, John Kabateck, California’s state
director of the National Federation
of Independent Business, said in a
statement that “[the] market, not politicians and bureaucrats, ought to be
dictating the financial growth and success of working men and women in
California. Let the market dictate this and let’s stop sending the message that
mediocrity is a pathway to processional success in California.”
Nine states have passed laws or ballot
measures that incrementally increase their statewide minimum wage rates to $15
per hour, with California being the first to reach the $15 per-hour threshold
in 2022.
Study: Record Number of Workplace Bullying Claims During Pandemic
As Bloomberg reported, a historic number of bullying claims have
been part of lawsuits in the United Kingdom’s employment courts over
the past year, “in a sign that, while working from home is welcomed by many,
it’s also contributing to tensions for others,” wrote Bloomberg’s Katharine
Gemmell.
An analysis from employment law firm Fox
& Partners found that employment tribunals, which hear actions brought
against employers by workers, saw a 44% surge in cases that included bullying
allegations. The number increased to 835 suits in the 12 months through the end
of March, compared to 581 in the previous period.
This jump could serve as a wake-up call for
many firms and shows that leadership teams have “struggled to maintain healthy
workplaces during the shift to hybrid working,” said Ivor Adair, a partner at
Fox & Partners, in a statement.
In its analysis, the firm also provided examples of bullying patterns that are hard to identify, “such as leaving colleagues out of remote meetings, gossiping on messaging apps and making cutting remarks on video calls that are hard to address,” Gemmell wrote.
