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With a shortage of nurses and healthcare workers, some hospitals are dropping the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Shortages existed before the pandemic. The burnout for healthcare workers led to people dropping out. The lure of high pay has also led to nurses to travel to hot spots further crimping supply of workers. Recently workers who do not want ot get vaccinated have quit the industry or lost their jobs, some have left for facilities that do not follow the vaccine requirement. CDC estimates 30% of healthcare workers at 2000 hospitals in the US are unvaccinated as of September 2021. The Biden vaccine mandate would be effective for second shots by Jan. 4. A federal judge in Louisiana has ruled in Nov. questioning the president's authority for a vaccine mandate. Following that ruling HCA, AdventHealth, Tenet, Cleveland Clinic are among the hospital chains reversing earlier decisions for vaccine mandate. Other hospital chains in California Kaiser Permanante and in New York Northwell Health have kept the vaccine mandate. Kaiser had 98% staff vaccinated, with a similar situation at Northwell. Kaiser has 210,000 employees and Northwell 77,000. Utah Mountain also has 98% vaccinated.  Research on vaccine mandates suggests them to be effective. U Penn psychology research shows people are more likely to get encouraged to get vaccine than discouraged with a vaccine mandate not vaccinated working in healthcare in September will shrink considerably by January. ...

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Some of the UAW union's key demands such as a 25% increase, cost of living adjustments, and other benefits leads to the settlement with Stellantis and Ford Motor Company. The 25% increase is spread out over four and half years so that the companies remain competitive.

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Sweden implements new rules that make it easier for companies to recruit foreigners for jobs in Sweden. The idea is to meet labor shortages in the short run and to support an aging population down the road. For the first 2 weeks the job postings have to be made with an employment registry that reaches all 27 EU member countries and then the position can be made open to foreigners outside the EU. THe Swedish Public Employment Agency is no longer required to examine each individual case for ability to fill it with someone inside Sweden. But employment is still required to meet working conditions and collective bargaining agreements with workers so that these areas are safeguarded. So as the UK moves to a points system, Sweden moves in another direction.

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The employment-to-population ratio for people aged 20-24 fell to 60.1% from 67.1% in the last 3 years. Prof. Katz says young people who have not entered the labor force and a large number of people who have applied for disability benefits are problem areas. The unemployment rate of 9.4% does not reflect the people who have given up looking for a job, or those who retired, and those who applied for long-term disability benefits.

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Guardian View in 2026 for Burnham:  people will not reward Labour for a new model of the state but for making life cheaper, easier, and more secure. Cutting unprotected departments, cutting public investment, is not the option. It is about making public services from water, energy, transport to education and healthcare work efficiently and better for ordinary people.

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This Yomiuri discusses the approach of the labor unions Rengo and the business organization Keidanren to the efforts to revive Japan's economy under prime minister Abe. Abe has encouraged Japanese companies to increase wages so that consumption spending can be supported. One measure proposed by the Abe administration is to reduce taxes for companies which increase wages. The government is also taking action so that the temp workers -the one third of the labor force working under temporary contracts at lower wages- can be converted to regular full time status with higher salaries.

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"Kurzarbeit" job preservation programs incorporate an idea that workers make up for less pay when a company is doing well by being paid and on the job when a company is doing poorly, leading to job preservation benefitting the employee and skills preservation benefitting the company. In 2013 in the throes of the eurozone crisis France passed a labor reform law and committed to improving competitiveness by adopting some ideas from its close neighbor and partner in the eurozone experiment, Germany. But experts say little has changed. France's unemployment is at a high of 10.4% in the third quarter 2014, according to the French statistics office Insee, with little prospect of economic growth in 2015. What happened? A report commissioned by the French and German governments from economists Jean Pisani-Ferry and Henrik Enderlein, says job preservation agreements in France are too strict and ineffective. Half a million more people are without jobs in Dec. 2014 compared to May 2012 when president Hollande took office. Insolvencies in France are 35% higher in 2014 than the average between 2003-2007, for Germany 31% lower, according to credit insurer Euler Hermes. Just in the 12 months to Sept 30, 63,000 companies in France were declared insolvent. Job preservation agreements have failed because other changes in the legal system are needed. Currently a company must prove to an employee council why it is reducing wages in a downturn. A small group of employees can still reject the agreement and ask for severance packages, leading to layoffs. The reforms were done in piecemeal fashion, say economists Jean Pisani-Ferry and Henrik Enderlein....

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The Harris campaign and efforts by unions and workers to reach working class people in the closing days of Harris vs Trump in 2024.

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A 5% wage hike in Japan in 2023 for workers was the largest in 33 years. The central bank of Japan now supports a 5% wage hike in 2024 that unions are negotiating.

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Labor seeing a decline in unionized workers from 20% in 1980 in the private sector to 7.5% today according to the Labor Department, wants legislation embodied in the Employee Free Choice Act to help increase the number of unionized workers. Without the required 60 votes in the Senate to resist filibuster and reluctant to pick a big fight with the Chambers of Commerice and National Manufacturers Association and the business lobby on this issue early in the term, makes the Obama administration unlikely to push this issue too hard. The Employee Free Choice bill would give unions and not companies as under current law, the choice of having workers vote for a union by signing cards instead of through a secret ballot election. Card signing is preferred by unions because it can be done without an employer's knowledge. With secret ballot elections companies typically have months to mount an opposition. The bill also authorizes an arbitrator to impose a first contract ifa union fails to reach agreement with a company by 120 days following the union's formation. Under current law if the two sides don't reach a contract within a year, the union typically loses its right to be the exclusive bargaining agent for the workers....

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Andy Burnham, Mayor of the Greater Manchester region in Britain wins the Makerfield by election for UK parliament, and is now set to take over the leadership of the Labour Party, to be the next prime minister of Britain. In the election he won with 55% of the vote far surpassing the 44% of the Reform party, Restore party and the Conservatives combined. 

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Reform with 27% of the vote, Conservatives second at 20%, Greens third at 16%, in local elections in Britain in May 2026. Reform Party is strongest in pro Brexit areas. It performed well in areas won by Boris Johnson of the Conservatives. Labour does better in London compared to rest of country, and loses in Wales and Scotland. Liberals make no gains. Starmer holds onto the premiership in a fragmented Britain after the Mandelson scandal.

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48% of British voters see immigration as the most important issue says Ipsos. And 31% say their local area is housing more than its fair share of asylum seekers growing to 61% of Reform UK voters. Reform UK is now leading party with 34% of the vote to Labour's 25% and Liberals 11%. The report in the WSJ on Augu 28 shows how the Labour government did not live up to it's talk on immigration. It also shows how the Conservatives and Boris Johnson failed by opening up non EU immigration from Asia on the grounds that it would bring in the brightest and yet dropped the basic colege degree requirement paradoxically. Lobbying from health care home care increased migration for this field under Conservatives and is only now being reversed by Labour. Labour has been too slow and the culture of Britain and Labour has not changed enough to grasp the problem. Their are vested interests in Britain such as universities and home care health care that have influenced the conduct of policy so that migration on non-eu has replaced eu migration after Brexit but not attracted the most qualified immigrants. The 4% of the British population that entered Britain after Brexit as immigrants, millions arrived and now when Labour is trying to bring this down faces a large number of dependent applications.University students are now bringing in their dependents at rates that have skyrocketed. ...

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With continued job growth the US Fed is planning to continue its sequential interest rate increases. The Fed raised interest rates 0.75% at each of the last 3 Fed meetings and a fourth 0.75 rate increase is expected when it meets on November 1-2, 2022. This is the most rapid rate of increases since the 1980's and it is designed to bring inflation under control.

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Finland faces a severe shortage of workers with about 60% of positions unfilled in the larger Helsinki area. About 100,000 new tech positions will have to be filled. In other lower wage sectors there is the problem of low wages as there is no minimum wage in Finland with sector by sector negotiation for wages. Far right parties are opposed to immigration. Ukrainian workers have to learn Finnish or English to integrate into the Finnish workplace. Elections will be decided on this issue in 2023.