Nation Ready for Democrats to Screw with the Working Class as Soon as Possible.
Experimental Four Eight Year Reality TV Show Has Negative Effect on Nation. Vending Machines Stealing Our Jobs!
Don’t Side With Neoliberalism in Opposing Trump
In opposing Trump, we must not slip into defending neoliberalism.
During the Bernie Sanders campaign I heard a high-level official give a powerful speech blasting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act for the harm it would bring to workers, environmentalists and to all who cared about protecting democracy.
Donald Trump now has signed an executive order pulling out of the TPP negotiations.
Is this a victory or a defeat for the tens of thousands of progressives who campaigned to kill the TPP?
On the same day Trump killed the TPP, he met with corporate executives saying he would cut taxes and regulations to spur business development. But he also warned that "a company that wants to fire all of the people in the United States and build some factories someplace else and think the product is going to flow across the border, that is not going to happen." He said he would use "a substantial border tax" to stop those practices.
Is this a victory or a defeat for workers and unions who for three decades have been begging politicians to stop the outsourcing of decent middle-class jobs?
Breaking the Spell of Neoliberalism
Our answers may be clouded by four decades of the neoliberal catechism-tax cuts on the wealthy, Wall Street deregulation, privatization of public services and "free" trade. Politicians, pundits and overpaid economists long ago concluded that such policies will encourage a "better business climate," which in turn will lead to all boats rising. Instead those very same policies led to a massive financial crash, runaway inequality and a revolt against neoliberalism which fueled both the Sanders and Trump insurgencies. (See enough facts to make you nauseous.)
This ideology is so pervasive that today no one is shocked or surprised to see Democratic governors on TV ads trying to lure business to their states by promising decades of tax holidays. No one gags when politicians lavish enormous tax gifts on corporations-even hedge funds-in order to keep jobs from leaving their states.
Similarly, we have grown accustomed to the neoliberal notion that we should go deeply into debt in order to gain access to higher education. Free higher education, which was the norm in New York and California until the 1970s, was "unrealistic" until Sanders rekindled the idea.
More troubling still, elites propagated the idea that public goods should not be free and available to all via progressive taxation. Rather public goods were denigrated and then offered up for privatization. Even civil rights icon Representative John Lewis used the neoliberal framework to attack Bernie Sanders' call for free higher education and universal health care: “I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”
Obama/Clinton didn't, Trump did
Ironically, while Lewis is defending neoliberalism, Trump actually is attacking two of its foundational elements-free trade and unlimited capital mobility. Not only is Trump violating neoliberal theory, he also is clashing with the most basic way Wall Street cannibalizes us. Without the free movement of capital, assisted by trade deals, financial elites and their corporate partners would not be able to slash labor costs, destroy unions and siphon off wealth into their own pockets.
In particular, we should be extremely worried about how Trump is approaching the loss of manufacturing jobs. The neoliberal fog should not cause us to miss the obvious: presidents Obama and Clinton did absolutely nothing to stop the hemorrhaging of middle-class manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. (U.S. manufacturing fell from 20.1 percent of all jobs in 1980 to only 8.8 percent by 2013.) Not only did Obama and Clinton fail to stop even one factory from moving away, but they truly believed that capital mobility and free trade were good for America and the world. In other words they had sipped plenty of the neoliberal Kool-Aid.
Meanwhile, Trump is all in. He is saying that jobs in the U.S. are more important than the long-run benefits of capital mobility and TPP/NAFTA agreements. If he keeps bashing corporations for moving jobs abroad and if he manages to ignite even a mini U.S. manufacturing jobs boom, Trump could be with us for eight long years.
But what about the poor in other countries?
To many progressives, saving American jobs sounds jingoistic and "protectionism" is a bad word. Isn't global trade helping the poor become less so around the world? Isn't it selfish only to protect American jobs? Isn't it more moral to share scarce manufacturing jobs with the poor in Mexico and Asia? After all, even if a plant closes in the Rust Belt, service sector jobs can be found at wages that still are far higher than what the poor can hope for in low-wage countries.
You can be sure corporations will be playing this tune if Trump tightens the screws on capital mobility.
These arguments however have little to do with how the world actually functions.
What do we do?
The progressive instinct, and rightfully so, is to trash Trump. If he's for it, we must be against it. When it comes to immigration, civil rights, abortion, freedom of the press and many, many other issues, that's a sound strategy.
But trashing Trump for saving jobs in the U.S. is suicidal.
In opposing Trump, we must not slip into defending neoliberalism. It's not okay for corporations to pack up and leave. We should have some control over our economic lives and not leave all the crucial decisions to Wall Street and their corporate puppets. Trade deals are bad deals unless they enforce the highest health, safety, environmental and labor standards. And those measures must be enforceable by all the parties. The race to the bottom is real and must stop.
In the U.S. we should be mobilizing the following areas:
1. Organize the outsourced: We should identify and organize all those at risk from off-shoring. We need to make sure Trump and Congress hear from these actual and potential victims. Trump needs to be reminded each and every day that there are millions of jobs he must protect. At the same time we should be rounding up support for the Sanders bill to stop off-shoring.
2. Resist:Trump has made it clear to corporate America that in exchange for job creation in the U.S. he will cut their taxes and regulations. We should demand that all tax "reforms" include a new financial speculation tax (Robin Hood Tax) on Wall Street to slow down their insatiable greed. Also, we need to fight tooth and nail against any weakening of workplace health, safety and environmental regulations. We have to destroy the Faustian bargain where jobs are protected but the workers and the communities are poisoned.
3. Connect: More than 3 million people protested against Trump. But it is doubtful that dislocated workers and those facing outsourcing were involved in these marches. That's because the progressive movement has gotten too comfortable with issue silos that often exclude these kinds of working-class issues. That has to change in a hurry. We need to reach out to all workers in danger of off-shoring-blue and white collar alike.
4. Expand: Many key issues-from having the largest prison population in the world to having one the lowest life-spans-are connected through runaway inequality. Outsourcing is deeply connected to the driving force behind runaway inequality-a rapacious Wall Street and its constant pressure for higher returns. We need to broaden the outsourcing issue to include stock buybacks and the other techniques used by Wall Street to strip-mine our jobs and our communities. It's time for a broad-based common agenda that includes a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street, free higher education, Medicare for All, an end to outsourcing, fair trade and a guaranteed job at a living wage for all those willing and able.
5. Educate: In order to build a sustained progressive movement we will need to develop a systematic educational campaign to counter neoliberal ideology. We need reading groups, study groups, formal classes, conferences, articles and more to undermine this pernicious ideology. Some of us are fortunate to be part of new train-the-trainer programs all over the country. We need to expand them so that we can field thousands of educators to carry this message.
Yes, all of this is very difficult, especially when it seems like a madman is running the country. It is far easier to resist than to tear apart neoliberalism. But we have to try. We need to recapture the job outsourcing issue and rekindle the flames that ignited Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign.
Don’t Side With Neoliberalism in Opposing Trump
“People are riveted.” How never-ending political turmoil is dragging down American workers’ productivity
Managers in many workplaces, watching their employees distracted by the political tensions of the 2016 campaign, probably thought they’d breathe a sigh of relief once the brutal and divisive election came to a close. People would refocus on their jobs, divisions between workers would quiet down, and the news cycle would settle into a manageable pace that didn’t fill employees’ desktop screens and mobile phones with the latest social media outrage every few minutes.
But nearly three months later, many are still holding their breath. Instead, human resources consultants say, the onslaught of headlines, tweets and executive orders that have characterized President Donald Trump’s chaotic first two weeks have kept politics center stage in many workplaces. As employees - supporters or detractors - digest the latest Trump tweet or the world responds to the newest controversial order from the president, the intensely active and rapid-fire style of Trump’s first few days has become a constant and, some say, distracting workplace presence.
One human resources consultant compared the deluge of headlines and the constant access many workers have to social media, news alerts and confirmation hearing videos on their screens to the distractions that sporting events like March Madness can bring to working hours.
“People are riveted,” says Jeanne Meister, a consultant who works with human resources managers from Fortune 500 companies. “But unlike March Madness, this affects our lives. This affects our children’s lives.” She says some clients have observed “their employees are being engulfed in it. They thought it would stop with the election. But people are still obsessed and talking about it and getting upset about it.”
The turbulent days following Trump’s inauguration - which played out on screens across workers’ computers on a Friday - have included executive orders or memorandums about border walls, government hiring freezes and withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Controversy after controversy has erupted from the president’s Twitter feed, from an obsession over crowd size at his inauguration to claims of massive voter fraud, made without any evidence. A temporary ban on the entry of visitors, migrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries resulted in massive protests and confusion at the country’s airports; by Monday morning many tech workers woke up to their bosses issuing statements to reassure workers of their commitment to diversity or to outright oppose the ban.
While the level of anxiety, applause or simple pass-the-popcorn preoccupation depends widely on the type of workplace - blue collar or professional, right- or left- leaning, made up of desk jockeys or assembly line workers - many human resources consultants say the flood of change and news is taking up much more of workers’ energy and focus than in past presidential transitions.
Michael Letizia, a human resources consultant in Stockton, Calif., said that after Trump was inaugurated, “I’ve had way more calls from my clients about what to do about cellphones in the workplace. There’s so much happening so quickly, and these alerts and tweets are coming out four, five, even six times a day.”
Letizia said a hospital client recently added a television tuned to CNN in a break room so employees can “feel they have access to what’s happening.”
Following the travel ban, some companies publicly acknowledged the unease employees were feeling. In a letter to workers last Sunday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote “I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack,” while Tim Ryan, U.S. chairman of PwC, wrote that some employees “have also written simply to share their fear, concern and desire to help those who need help.”
Technology workplaces, in particular, have been focused on the travel ban. Aaron Levie, CEO of Redwood City, Calif.-based Box, who has spoken out against the ban, told The Post in an interview that “this is an active and ongoing issue. This is a major topic of discussion in our office.”
An official with another major technology firm, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said that on Monday, “productivity was next to zero” following Trump’s travel order. “People are not just concerned about the future of their jobs. They’re concerned about the future of their country. It’s a very difficult environment under which you’re expected to produce creative and innovative ideas. It is a constant, constant topic.”
Some employers say their workers are paying heavy attention to the onslaught, and that it isn’t helping the mood, even if they aren’t seeing signs that it’s hurting productivity, yet. Adam Ochstein, CEO of StratEx, a software company in Chicago, says most of his employees - many of which are younger and lean Democratic - have two monitors at their desktop. He often sees one of them tuned to CNN or Cabinet hearings.
“I don’t know if it’s the fact that Chicago has had a nine-day streak with no sun,” he said Wednesday, “or if we’ve got tired folks staring at Twitter and CNN. But there seems to be a mood and a sentiment that’s grayer, and heavier.”
Others agree they’re not seeing productivity take a hit, but that employees are paying more attention to the news at work.
“No matter what you believe or where you are on the side of politics, people seem to be watching the news more, watching the headlines,” said Desiree Fish, who heads communications for TripAdvisor in Needham, Mass., whose CEO also condemned Trump’s travel ban. “It’s almost like every day they wake up to say ‘what’s happening today?’ ”
The political obsession is not just a blue-state phenomenon. Clinton Bradley, who runs a recruiting and H.R. consultancy in Kansas City, said he continues to get requests for training to manage employees’ political differences, as well as questions about how to address workers constantly checking their phones for social media updates, even in manufacturing settings. “They see them posting political comments when they’re supposed to be working,” he said.
Amy Baxter, a pediatrician and the founder of a small medical device firm in Atlanta, said she has been steering clear of the news during the workday “because it’s anxiety-provoking,” but she still gets articles emailed to her or alerts that pop up during the day.
“There is this ADHD distraction with the most recent egregious thing,” said Baxter, a Hillary Clinton supporter who says she is concerned about issues including ethical questions surrounding Trump and how trade deals might affect her business. “You’re like, ‘what’s burning now?’ ”
Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist based in New York, says the traditional advice he gives leaders during times of change or crisis isn’t possible right now.
“One of the particularly stressful things I’m finding in the workplaces I’m consulting is the challenge of separating fact from speculation,” he says. His typical advice at a time of great change, he says, is to have leaders say “here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know.” But “in the current situation, it’s hard to say that.”
Phyllis Hartman, an H.R. consultant near Pittsburgh, says her clients haven’t been calling her with distraction issues. But she has heard recent complaints in diversity classes she leads about people making snide political comments. And when she shows a graphic in those classes of the things that make workers different - race, education, beliefs, values - she’s noticed that “very often in these classes someone says ‘you’re missing something on that picture. Where’s politics?’ ”
In New Castle, Del., Joanne Lee, vice president of human resources at beverage distributor N.K.S. Distributors, says workers at her 130-person company are split down the middle, politically. She hasn’t noticed much distraction or loss of productivity in recent weeks, but says people are in a wait-and-see mode.
“I think people are just sitting on the edge of their seat, hoping it doesn’t cause a big disruption,” she says. “There was a lot of chatter before the election. Now I think people just want peace.”
“People are riveted.” How never-ending political turmoil is dragging down American workers’ productivity
Spotting a slot in the market led to Australia's first vending-machine-only shop
In a small shopfront in St Kilda, Hari Shotham thinks he's found the future of Australian retail.
Vending machines.
Mr Shotham's new shop, which opened in late December, stocks a mind-boggling array of products: vitamins, perfumes, mobile phone accessories, bandages, medicine, Coca-Cola.
Coming soon: coffee, fruit juice, cycling accessories and DVDs.
All from 13 vending machines. No shop assistants, no managers. Open 24 hours a day.
Mr Shotham does not even bother turning up there most days - he just monitors the store's CCTV on his mobile phone.
It is, Mr Shotham claims, Australia's first vending-machine-only shop, and he says its making a killing. Each machine is turning over $1000 a week.
"With a target of 20 machines we are on target to $20,000", he says.
There are plans to expand quickly, with Mr Shotham hoping to have 10 more vending-machine-only shops open by mid-year.
"Surprisingly, the numbers have been amazing. We haven't even got a proper sign out."
Among the biggest sellers so far? Perfume for young women looking for a fragrance top-up while partying at one of Fitzroy Street's nightclubs.
For now the store is called Vitamin Warehouse, but considering the enormous range of products sold Mr Shotham acknowledges a name-change may be needed.
Mr Shotham's store on Fitzroy Street is set up near direct competitors, including one of the newest shopfronts of discount behemoth Chemist Warehouse.
But he says he is able to significantly undercut their price on similar items, in part because he spends very little on staffing costs. Plus theft costs are essentially zero.
"The highest problem in pharmacies is everything has to be under lock and key. Theft is a massive problem. In a vending machine you cannot steal."
He cheerfully boasts of selling St Kilda's cheapest can of Coke - only 99 cents.
Mr Shotham has been in the vitamin business for 40 years, working first with Chemist Warehouse - now his major competitor.
The chain used to stock his own brand of vitamins until what he describes as a "slight misunderstanding" saw them getting pulled from shelves.
A stint working in Hong Kong was when he first realised the potential for vending-machine retail.
Many Hong Kong railway stations feature highly-popular umbrella vending machines; why not expand the concept, Mr Shotham pondered.
Back in Australia, he originally tried buying vending machines, filling them with vitamins and healthcare products, and renting leases in shopping centres.
But centre management was unwilling to allow his vending machines in because they might compete with the pharmacies that already tenanted the store and paid higher rents, he said.
Frustrated, he hopped in his car and drove about the suburbs, looking for a good spot for his machines.
"And as luck had it there was a shop in St Kilda right next to a 7Eleven," he said.
Fitzroy Street has been in decline in recent years according to local shopkeepers and politicians, with a high turnover of businesses and many closed down and boarded up shopfronts.
But Mr Shotham is confident his venture is the start of something huge. After all, as he points out, how can he go wrong - where else can you get a can of Coke for 99 cents?
Spotting a slot in the market led to Australia's first vending-machine-only shop
Don’t Side With Neoliberalism in Opposing Trump
In opposing Trump, we must not slip into defending neoliberalism.
During the Bernie Sanders campaign I heard a high-level official give a powerful speech blasting the Trans-Pacific Partnership Act for the harm it would bring to workers, environmentalists and to all who cared about protecting democracy.
Donald Trump now has signed an executive order pulling out of the TPP negotiations.
Is this a victory or a defeat for the tens of thousands of progressives who campaigned to kill the TPP?
On the same day Trump killed the TPP, he met with corporate executives saying he would cut taxes and regulations to spur business development. But he also warned that "a company that wants to fire all of the people in the United States and build some factories someplace else and think the product is going to flow across the border, that is not going to happen." He said he would use "a substantial border tax" to stop those practices.
Is this a victory or a defeat for workers and unions who for three decades have been begging politicians to stop the outsourcing of decent middle-class jobs?
Breaking the Spell of Neoliberalism
Our answers may be clouded by four decades of the neoliberal catechism-tax cuts on the wealthy, Wall Street deregulation, privatization of public services and "free" trade. Politicians, pundits and overpaid economists long ago concluded that such policies will encourage a "better business climate," which in turn will lead to all boats rising. Instead those very same policies led to a massive financial crash, runaway inequality and a revolt against neoliberalism which fueled both the Sanders and Trump insurgencies. (See enough facts to make you nauseous.)
This ideology is so pervasive that today no one is shocked or surprised to see Democratic governors on TV ads trying to lure business to their states by promising decades of tax holidays. No one gags when politicians lavish enormous tax gifts on corporations-even hedge funds-in order to keep jobs from leaving their states.
Similarly, we have grown accustomed to the neoliberal notion that we should go deeply into debt in order to gain access to higher education. Free higher education, which was the norm in New York and California until the 1970s, was "unrealistic" until Sanders rekindled the idea.
More troubling still, elites propagated the idea that public goods should not be free and available to all via progressive taxation. Rather public goods were denigrated and then offered up for privatization. Even civil rights icon Representative John Lewis used the neoliberal framework to attack Bernie Sanders' call for free higher education and universal health care: “I think it’s the wrong message to send to any group. There’s not anything free in America. We all have to pay for something. Education is not free. Health care is not free. Food is not free. Water is not free. I think it’s very misleading to say to the American people, we’re going to give you something free.”
Obama/Clinton didn't, Trump did
Ironically, while Lewis is defending neoliberalism, Trump actually is attacking two of its foundational elements-free trade and unlimited capital mobility. Not only is Trump violating neoliberal theory, he also is clashing with the most basic way Wall Street cannibalizes us. Without the free movement of capital, assisted by trade deals, financial elites and their corporate partners would not be able to slash labor costs, destroy unions and siphon off wealth into their own pockets.
In particular, we should be extremely worried about how Trump is approaching the loss of manufacturing jobs. The neoliberal fog should not cause us to miss the obvious: presidents Obama and Clinton did absolutely nothing to stop the hemorrhaging of middle-class manufacturing jobs to low-wage countries. (U.S. manufacturing fell from 20.1 percent of all jobs in 1980 to only 8.8 percent by 2013.) Not only did Obama and Clinton fail to stop even one factory from moving away, but they truly believed that capital mobility and free trade were good for America and the world. In other words they had sipped plenty of the neoliberal Kool-Aid.
Meanwhile, Trump is all in. He is saying that jobs in the U.S. are more important than the long-run benefits of capital mobility and TPP/NAFTA agreements. If he keeps bashing corporations for moving jobs abroad and if he manages to ignite even a mini U.S. manufacturing jobs boom, Trump could be with us for eight long years.
But what about the poor in other countries?
To many progressives, saving American jobs sounds jingoistic and "protectionism" is a bad word. Isn't global trade helping the poor become less so around the world? Isn't it selfish only to protect American jobs? Isn't it more moral to share scarce manufacturing jobs with the poor in Mexico and Asia? After all, even if a plant closes in the Rust Belt, service sector jobs can be found at wages that still are far higher than what the poor can hope for in low-wage countries.
You can be sure corporations will be playing this tune if Trump tightens the screws on capital mobility.
These arguments however have little to do with how the world actually functions.
- First, the big winners in the outsourcing game are the corporations and their top Wall Street investors. (In fact Wall Street is driving the process by endless pressure for stock buybacks.) It's hard to make the case that the poor in Mexico have been the beneficiaries of NAFTA.
- Second, it is morally suspect to argue that someone else should give up his or her standard of living so that the product made here can be produced abroad by the same company and imported back into the U.S. No worker can afford to donate his or her job to developing nations.
- Third, outsourcing to low wage areas always involves increasing health, safety and environmental hazards. In almost every case production moves from more stringent standards to weaker standards. Plus, the increased distances the products must travel mean there will be more carbon emissions than if production remained here.
What do we do?
The progressive instinct, and rightfully so, is to trash Trump. If he's for it, we must be against it. When it comes to immigration, civil rights, abortion, freedom of the press and many, many other issues, that's a sound strategy.
But trashing Trump for saving jobs in the U.S. is suicidal.
In opposing Trump, we must not slip into defending neoliberalism. It's not okay for corporations to pack up and leave. We should have some control over our economic lives and not leave all the crucial decisions to Wall Street and their corporate puppets. Trade deals are bad deals unless they enforce the highest health, safety, environmental and labor standards. And those measures must be enforceable by all the parties. The race to the bottom is real and must stop.
In the U.S. we should be mobilizing the following areas:
1. Organize the outsourced: We should identify and organize all those at risk from off-shoring. We need to make sure Trump and Congress hear from these actual and potential victims. Trump needs to be reminded each and every day that there are millions of jobs he must protect. At the same time we should be rounding up support for the Sanders bill to stop off-shoring.
2. Resist:Trump has made it clear to corporate America that in exchange for job creation in the U.S. he will cut their taxes and regulations. We should demand that all tax "reforms" include a new financial speculation tax (Robin Hood Tax) on Wall Street to slow down their insatiable greed. Also, we need to fight tooth and nail against any weakening of workplace health, safety and environmental regulations. We have to destroy the Faustian bargain where jobs are protected but the workers and the communities are poisoned.
3. Connect: More than 3 million people protested against Trump. But it is doubtful that dislocated workers and those facing outsourcing were involved in these marches. That's because the progressive movement has gotten too comfortable with issue silos that often exclude these kinds of working-class issues. That has to change in a hurry. We need to reach out to all workers in danger of off-shoring-blue and white collar alike.
4. Expand: Many key issues-from having the largest prison population in the world to having one the lowest life-spans-are connected through runaway inequality. Outsourcing is deeply connected to the driving force behind runaway inequality-a rapacious Wall Street and its constant pressure for higher returns. We need to broaden the outsourcing issue to include stock buybacks and the other techniques used by Wall Street to strip-mine our jobs and our communities. It's time for a broad-based common agenda that includes a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street, free higher education, Medicare for All, an end to outsourcing, fair trade and a guaranteed job at a living wage for all those willing and able.
5. Educate: In order to build a sustained progressive movement we will need to develop a systematic educational campaign to counter neoliberal ideology. We need reading groups, study groups, formal classes, conferences, articles and more to undermine this pernicious ideology. Some of us are fortunate to be part of new train-the-trainer programs all over the country. We need to expand them so that we can field thousands of educators to carry this message.
Yes, all of this is very difficult, especially when it seems like a madman is running the country. It is far easier to resist than to tear apart neoliberalism. But we have to try. We need to recapture the job outsourcing issue and rekindle the flames that ignited Occupy Wall Street and the Sanders campaign.
Don’t Side With Neoliberalism in Opposing Trump
Click to view“People are riveted.” How never-ending political turmoil is dragging down American workers’ productivity
Managers in many workplaces, watching their employees distracted by the political tensions of the 2016 campaign, probably thought they’d breathe a sigh of relief once the brutal and divisive election came to a close. People would refocus on their jobs, divisions between workers would quiet down, and the news cycle would settle into a manageable pace that didn’t fill employees’ desktop screens and mobile phones with the latest social media outrage every few minutes.
But nearly three months later, many are still holding their breath. Instead, human resources consultants say, the onslaught of headlines, tweets and executive orders that have characterized President Donald Trump’s chaotic first two weeks have kept politics center stage in many workplaces. As employees - supporters or detractors - digest the latest Trump tweet or the world responds to the newest controversial order from the president, the intensely active and rapid-fire style of Trump’s first few days has become a constant and, some say, distracting workplace presence.
One human resources consultant compared the deluge of headlines and the constant access many workers have to social media, news alerts and confirmation hearing videos on their screens to the distractions that sporting events like March Madness can bring to working hours.
“People are riveted,” says Jeanne Meister, a consultant who works with human resources managers from Fortune 500 companies. “But unlike March Madness, this affects our lives. This affects our children’s lives.” She says some clients have observed “their employees are being engulfed in it. They thought it would stop with the election. But people are still obsessed and talking about it and getting upset about it.”
The turbulent days following Trump’s inauguration - which played out on screens across workers’ computers on a Friday - have included executive orders or memorandums about border walls, government hiring freezes and withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Controversy after controversy has erupted from the president’s Twitter feed, from an obsession over crowd size at his inauguration to claims of massive voter fraud, made without any evidence. A temporary ban on the entry of visitors, migrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries resulted in massive protests and confusion at the country’s airports; by Monday morning many tech workers woke up to their bosses issuing statements to reassure workers of their commitment to diversity or to outright oppose the ban.
While the level of anxiety, applause or simple pass-the-popcorn preoccupation depends widely on the type of workplace - blue collar or professional, right- or left- leaning, made up of desk jockeys or assembly line workers - many human resources consultants say the flood of change and news is taking up much more of workers’ energy and focus than in past presidential transitions.
Michael Letizia, a human resources consultant in Stockton, Calif., said that after Trump was inaugurated, “I’ve had way more calls from my clients about what to do about cellphones in the workplace. There’s so much happening so quickly, and these alerts and tweets are coming out four, five, even six times a day.”
Letizia said a hospital client recently added a television tuned to CNN in a break room so employees can “feel they have access to what’s happening.”
Following the travel ban, some companies publicly acknowledged the unease employees were feeling. In a letter to workers last Sunday, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote “I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack,” while Tim Ryan, U.S. chairman of PwC, wrote that some employees “have also written simply to share their fear, concern and desire to help those who need help.”
Technology workplaces, in particular, have been focused on the travel ban. Aaron Levie, CEO of Redwood City, Calif.-based Box, who has spoken out against the ban, told The Post in an interview that “this is an active and ongoing issue. This is a major topic of discussion in our office.”
An official with another major technology firm, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said that on Monday, “productivity was next to zero” following Trump’s travel order. “People are not just concerned about the future of their jobs. They’re concerned about the future of their country. It’s a very difficult environment under which you’re expected to produce creative and innovative ideas. It is a constant, constant topic.”
Some employers say their workers are paying heavy attention to the onslaught, and that it isn’t helping the mood, even if they aren’t seeing signs that it’s hurting productivity, yet. Adam Ochstein, CEO of StratEx, a software company in Chicago, says most of his employees - many of which are younger and lean Democratic - have two monitors at their desktop. He often sees one of them tuned to CNN or Cabinet hearings.
“I don’t know if it’s the fact that Chicago has had a nine-day streak with no sun,” he said Wednesday, “or if we’ve got tired folks staring at Twitter and CNN. But there seems to be a mood and a sentiment that’s grayer, and heavier.”
Others agree they’re not seeing productivity take a hit, but that employees are paying more attention to the news at work.
“No matter what you believe or where you are on the side of politics, people seem to be watching the news more, watching the headlines,” said Desiree Fish, who heads communications for TripAdvisor in Needham, Mass., whose CEO also condemned Trump’s travel ban. “It’s almost like every day they wake up to say ‘what’s happening today?’ ”
The political obsession is not just a blue-state phenomenon. Clinton Bradley, who runs a recruiting and H.R. consultancy in Kansas City, said he continues to get requests for training to manage employees’ political differences, as well as questions about how to address workers constantly checking their phones for social media updates, even in manufacturing settings. “They see them posting political comments when they’re supposed to be working,” he said.
Amy Baxter, a pediatrician and the founder of a small medical device firm in Atlanta, said she has been steering clear of the news during the workday “because it’s anxiety-provoking,” but she still gets articles emailed to her or alerts that pop up during the day.
“There is this ADHD distraction with the most recent egregious thing,” said Baxter, a Hillary Clinton supporter who says she is concerned about issues including ethical questions surrounding Trump and how trade deals might affect her business. “You’re like, ‘what’s burning now?’ ”
Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist based in New York, says the traditional advice he gives leaders during times of change or crisis isn’t possible right now.
“One of the particularly stressful things I’m finding in the workplaces I’m consulting is the challenge of separating fact from speculation,” he says. His typical advice at a time of great change, he says, is to have leaders say “here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know.” But “in the current situation, it’s hard to say that.”
Phyllis Hartman, an H.R. consultant near Pittsburgh, says her clients haven’t been calling her with distraction issues. But she has heard recent complaints in diversity classes she leads about people making snide political comments. And when she shows a graphic in those classes of the things that make workers different - race, education, beliefs, values - she’s noticed that “very often in these classes someone says ‘you’re missing something on that picture. Where’s politics?’ ”
In New Castle, Del., Joanne Lee, vice president of human resources at beverage distributor N.K.S. Distributors, says workers at her 130-person company are split down the middle, politically. She hasn’t noticed much distraction or loss of productivity in recent weeks, but says people are in a wait-and-see mode.
“I think people are just sitting on the edge of their seat, hoping it doesn’t cause a big disruption,” she says. “There was a lot of chatter before the election. Now I think people just want peace.”
“People are riveted.” How never-ending political turmoil is dragging down American workers’ productivity
Spotting a slot in the market led to Australia's first vending-machine-only shop
In a small shopfront in St Kilda, Hari Shotham thinks he's found the future of Australian retail.
Vending machines.
Mr Shotham's new shop, which opened in late December, stocks a mind-boggling array of products: vitamins, perfumes, mobile phone accessories, bandages, medicine, Coca-Cola.
Coming soon: coffee, fruit juice, cycling accessories and DVDs.
All from 13 vending machines. No shop assistants, no managers. Open 24 hours a day.
Mr Shotham does not even bother turning up there most days - he just monitors the store's CCTV on his mobile phone.
It is, Mr Shotham claims, Australia's first vending-machine-only shop, and he says its making a killing. Each machine is turning over $1000 a week.
"With a target of 20 machines we are on target to $20,000", he says.
There are plans to expand quickly, with Mr Shotham hoping to have 10 more vending-machine-only shops open by mid-year.
"Surprisingly, the numbers have been amazing. We haven't even got a proper sign out."
Among the biggest sellers so far? Perfume for young women looking for a fragrance top-up while partying at one of Fitzroy Street's nightclubs.
For now the store is called Vitamin Warehouse, but considering the enormous range of products sold Mr Shotham acknowledges a name-change may be needed.
Mr Shotham's store on Fitzroy Street is set up near direct competitors, including one of the newest shopfronts of discount behemoth Chemist Warehouse.
But he says he is able to significantly undercut their price on similar items, in part because he spends very little on staffing costs. Plus theft costs are essentially zero.
"The highest problem in pharmacies is everything has to be under lock and key. Theft is a massive problem. In a vending machine you cannot steal."
He cheerfully boasts of selling St Kilda's cheapest can of Coke - only 99 cents.
Mr Shotham has been in the vitamin business for 40 years, working first with Chemist Warehouse - now his major competitor.
The chain used to stock his own brand of vitamins until what he describes as a "slight misunderstanding" saw them getting pulled from shelves.
A stint working in Hong Kong was when he first realised the potential for vending-machine retail.
Many Hong Kong railway stations feature highly-popular umbrella vending machines; why not expand the concept, Mr Shotham pondered.
Back in Australia, he originally tried buying vending machines, filling them with vitamins and healthcare products, and renting leases in shopping centres.
But centre management was unwilling to allow his vending machines in because they might compete with the pharmacies that already tenanted the store and paid higher rents, he said.
Frustrated, he hopped in his car and drove about the suburbs, looking for a good spot for his machines.
"And as luck had it there was a shop in St Kilda right next to a 7Eleven," he said.
Fitzroy Street has been in decline in recent years according to local shopkeepers and politicians, with a high turnover of businesses and many closed down and boarded up shopfronts.
But Mr Shotham is confident his venture is the start of something huge. After all, as he points out, how can he go wrong - where else can you get a can of Coke for 99 cents?
Spotting a slot in the market led to Australia's first vending-machine-only shop