(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) As the vaccine arrives this week, so too do questions from employers regarding the role of the vaccine in the workplace and in return-to-work protocols. Can an employer mandate a vaccination for a worker […]

(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) Over the past eighteen months, the San Francisco Unified School District Board has decided that famed murals by Victor Arnautoff contain racist themes and need to be removed, that the names of public schools […]

(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) For the past two months the media in California have been running daily variations of the theme “Why Can’t I Get My Darn Unemployment Check”. Unemployed Californians tell reporters about waiting 10 weeks or […]

(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) The small business economy in California continues to deteriorate rapidly. Small business revenue in California was down 7.2% from January 2020 to early July. In the latest August data, revenue is now down more than 15.9%. The number […]

(Latest in a series since March on the pandemic’s employment impacts, and rebuilding America’s job base. The previous ones are here.) We’re now living in the unemployment insurance economy in California—an economy sustained in good part by unemployment insurance payments. By last Thursday, over 9 million unemployment claims had been filed in California since the […]

How can we rebuild California’s job base? The latest employment numbers released last week should provide the sense of urgency. An additional 267,123 new unemployment claims were filed just for the one week ending July 4, bringing the total to over 7.4 million claims filed in California since mid-March, and $41.5 billion paid out in […]

(Part of a series on the impacts of the coronavirus on employment and the workplace. The previous ones are here.)  A number of issues arising during the pandemic—issues of faith, certainty, freedom— lead us back to The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel published in 1880. It is not too grandiose to say that at a […]

(Part of a series on the impacts of the coronavirus on employment and the workplace. The previous ones are here.) The phrase “Appointment in Samarra” is usually associated with the 1934 novel of that name by John O’Hara. But the origin is the 1933 play, Sheppy, by Somerset Maugham. Near the end of the play, […]

Part of a series on the impacts on the coronavirus on employment and the workplace. The previous ones are here). Over the past week, plans for a phased reopening of the economy moved quickly forward. The White House issued reopening ideas and potential structures for the states. State Governors began appointing task forces on timing, […]

(The fifth in a series on the impacts of the coronavirus on employment and the workplace. The first four are here). On Friday, President Trump announced a task force on reopening the national economy. Also on Friday, several Governors, including California Governor Newsom, announced they were developing plans on state reopening processes and strategies.  Good. […]