DEL REY, Calif. — When I first visited this tiny farm town to pick peaches, I did not expect to return. Certainly not every summer. Yet in July, here I was again, in triple-degree heat, for the ninth straight year of a pilgrimage with friends to an orchard just south of Fresno, near the geographic […]
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One afternoon last February, in front of dozens of riled-up protesters and two police officers, a small, visibly distraught woman confronted her employer at Sunshine Shirt Laundry Center, a family-owned cleaner in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. In the back of the store, stacks of dirty shirts spilled from a few laundry carts alongside an ironing board, […]
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“I’m not going to be the president,” Mr. Inslee conceded. He announced shortly after that he would seek a third term as governor. Mr. Inslee drew an outpouring of praise this week for spotlighting climate issues with his candidacy. He spoke with my colleague Lisa Friedman about the attention he received immediately after exiting the […]
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My first experience taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (M.B.T.I.) was at a job where it was mandatory. The company’s chief executive announced that all employees would take the test as part of a quarterly staff retreat. The assessment concluded that I was an I.N.T.J. (Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, Judgment.) At the retreat, we were all encouraged […]
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Growing inequality and stagnant wages are forcing a much-needed debate about our corporate governance system. Are corporations producing returns only for stockholders? Or are they also creating quality jobs in a way that is environmentally responsible, fair to consumers and sustainable? Those same corporations recognize that things are badly out of balance. Businesses are making […]
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In the coming weeks, customers who order a meal via DoorDash, the nation’s biggest food-delivery app, will get something extra: a promise that when they tip, the money will go straight to the worker, rather than into DoorDash’s pocket. The company’s one million delivery workers will also get something else extra: an increase in minimum […]
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ALTOONA, Iowa — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont on Wednesday rolled out an ambitious plan to strengthen organized labor in the United States, setting a goal of doubling union membership in his first term as president. Mr. Sanders was among the biggest names in a procession of Democratic presidential candidates who affirmed their support for […]
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UPTON, N.Y. — As a technician at Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of the nation’s most prestigious science labs, Joseph Marino’s job in the late 1990s and early 2000s was to clean and maintain the supercomputers that have helped researchers unlock some of the world’s biggest scientific and medical mysteries. He polished copper connectors, he said, […]
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Adrian Paisley spends his days hunting for scrap metal: aluminum, brass and (holy of holies) copper. At 42, Paisley, who weighs just 135 pounds, is wiry and muscular. I once saw him move an old refrigerator by himself, hurling it onto his pickup truck as if it were made of Styrofoam. He lives for this […]
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MIAMI — After finishing a particularly satisfying dinner at a Coral Gables restaurant with his wife, Pedro Martinez quietly slipped around to the back alley where the kitchen is. “Whatever you’re making, I’ll give you a raise,” Mr. Martinez whispered when the back door swung open. An executive at 50 Eggs, a restaurant group based […]
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Employers added a half-million fewer jobs in 2018 and early 2019 than previously reported, the Labor Department said Wednesday. The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which survey-based estimates are brought into alignment with more definitive data from state unemployment insurance records. Wednesday’s revision covers the period through March; final […]
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WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials were sharply divided when they voted to cut interest rates for the first time in a decade in late July, newly-released minutes from their meeting last month show. Officials lowered borrowing costs by a quarter of a percentage point at their last meeting, citing slowing global growth, uncertainties from President […]
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American businesses are sending a clear message: They need to focus on doing more than making profit. Yesterday, the Business Roundtable, which represents the largest corporations in the United States, published a new, broader statement about the purpose of business, declaring that delivering shareholder value is not enough. The United States Chamber of Commerce, which […]
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President Trump and his advisers are considering options to stimulate the American economy as indicators that the administration previously used to boast of an economic “boom” have fizzled on the back of Mr. Trump’s escalating trade fights. Companies that Mr. Trump has pointed to as signs of economic strength are now warning of weakness. United […]
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Just a few years ago, the phrase “industrial policy” was employed mainly as a term of abuse. Economists almost universally insisted that state interventions to improve competitiveness, prioritize investment in strategic sectors and structure market incentives around political goals were backward policies doomed to failure — whether applied in America, Asia or anywhere in between. […]
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CUMBERLAND, Ky. — A little after 4 p.m. on Friday, four hulking big-rig cabs, facing each other in pairs and taking up both lanes, brought the Kingdom Come Parkway to a standstill. On the highway between the trucks, eight out-of-work coal miners raised a banner: “No Pay We Stay.” That is the miners’ plan in […]
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SAN ANTONIO — The economic odds facing Avigail Rodriguez a few years ago couldn’t have been much worse. An undocumented immigrant and a single mother, she lived in a cramped apartment in a tough neighborhood in San Antonio and earned just $9 an hour working as a nurse’s assistant. Today, Ms. Rodriguez, 26, owns her […]
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Parenting is rewarding, but it is also challenging. It is a full-time, rest-of-your life job. You always think — hope — that whatever difficulty you are facing with one period of a child’s life and development will simply be solved when he or she grows out of that phase. Soon, they’ll be potty trained, or […]
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BHUBANESWAR, India — Namita Pradhan sat at a desk in downtown Bhubaneswar, India, about 40 miles from the Bay of Bengal, staring at a video recorded in a hospital on the other side of the world. The video showed the inside of someone’s colon. Ms. Pradhan was looking for polyps, small growths in the large […]
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The Labor Department has proposed a rule that would allow more federal contractors to base employment decisions on religion, a move that rights advocates said could be used to discriminate against workers for all manner of reasons. The proposal, announced on Wednesday, seeks “to provide the broadest protection of religious exercise recognized by the Constitution […]
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