Acton Institute PowerBlog - Entries tagged as employment

Entries tagged as employment

Ethical Employment

Thursday, January 31, 2008

What do you look for when you are searching for a job? A growth industry? A healthy bottom-line? A positive corporate culture? Some combination of the above?

Fortune magazine recently rated the “Top 100 Places to Work.” Not surprisingly, at the top of the list is Google, which not only is dubbed the “millionaire factory” because of its generous stock option packages and a matching top tier share price, but because of the innovation associated with its workplace. Employees are encouraged to spend a good chunk of their time focusing on their own “pet” projects.

But second on the list is a Michigan-based company, Quicken Loans. What makes Quicken a great place to work? “Ethically driven” is what one employee calls the online mortgage lender: “It avoided the subprime crisis by sticking with plain-vanilla loans.” You don’t need to be a “social entrepreneur” in the latest sense of the term to be “ethically driven.”

So what connection is there between the top two companies on Fortune’s list? Google’s well-known motto is: “Don’t be evil.” You might call that the “silver rule” of business ethics. (The “golden rule” would be a positive statement like, “Do be good.”)

To the extent that Google and Quicken embody a way of doing business that emphasizes both profits and ethics, we can see how in the long run ethical business makes the most economic sense.

Also check out Christianity Today’s annual feature, “Best Christian Places to Work.”

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 09:55 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
business, economics, employment, ethics, fortune magazine, google, quicken loans, social entrepreneurship

A Single-State Recession

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

The number of jobs (nonfarm, not seasonally-adjusted) added to the US economy since 2004 numbers around 6 million.

But over the same period, Michigan has lost over 50,000 jobs. What’s going on?

A relative of mine recently described to me the situation from his perspective. His company has an office located in Michigan, and of the rather modest net profits accrued by the Michigan location, over 56% were paid to the state by means of the Single Business Tax (SBT).

The SBT has now been phased out going forward, but there’s been a huge partisan battle between Republicans in the state congress and Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm about what to do. The debates are well-chronicled on the Democratic side by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Mickey Switalski (see, for instance, the Feb. 23, 2007 edition of his newsletter, The Insider).

It looks now like the new tax policy replacing the SBT will be “revenue neutral,” in large part because the state was already facing a $1 billion budget deficit before the SBT was to be phased out. Besides the punitive SBT, many blame the employment climate in Michigan on the state’s “heavily unionized culture.”

The “revenue neutral” nature of the new tax plan seems to indicate to me that businesses in Michigan can continue to expect big chunks of their profits going to the state’s coffers. And that can only mean that Michigan’s single-state recession will continue, even if the tax penalty for adding payroll is modified under the new plan.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 07:13 | Comment (1) | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
employment, jobs, michigan, recession, single business tax

Two Career Marriages

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

A genuinely thorny pastoral issue that often arose in the course of my counseling was the question of two-career marriages. What should a couple do if the wife wanted/needed to work outside the home when children were present, especially when the children were young? Because I served suburban churches (from 1972-1992) some of my congregants needed to be two-income families just to survive. Others did not but made a choice to pursue two careers anyway. The scenario always varies from place to place. In urban and poorer communities the need for two incomes is so great that there is little choice but to have both husband and wife fully employed at all times. The choice is never an easy one and always filled with real pressures no matter which way you decide to go.

(Continue reading the rest of the article at the ACT 3 website...)

John H. Armstrong is founder and director of ACT 3, a ministry aimed at “encouraging the church, through its leadership, to pursue doctrinal and ethical reformation and to foster spiritual awakening.”

Posted by John H. Armstrong in Business and Society at 18:10 | Leave a comment | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
career, employment, marriage, vocation, work

The Effects of Federal Unionism

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

According to figures recently released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, federal workers receive on average about double what private sector workers make: $106,579 vs. $53,289. These numbers are based on total compensation.

A study done by the Cato Institute (PDF here of 2004 figures), under the direction of Chris Edwards, shows that for 2005, “If you consider wages without benefits, the average federal civilian worker earned $71,114, 62 percent more than the average private-sector worker, who made $43,917.”

In his WaPo op-ed, Christ Edwards points to a number of reasons for this disparity. He says that there are a number of contributing factors. “Federal pay schedules increase every year regardless of how well the economy is doing. Thus in recession years, private pay stagnates while government pay continues to rise. Another factor is the steadily increasing ‘locality’ payments given to federal workers in higher-cost cities,” he says.

Edwards continues, “Rapid growth in federal pay also results from regular promotions that move workers into higher salary brackets regardless of performance and from redefining jobs upward into higher pay ranges. The federal workforce has become increasingly top-heavy.” In addition, “The structure of that workforce has also changed over time. There are fewer low-pay typists and more high-pay computer experts in the government today than there were a generation ago.”

A WSJ op-ed also notes that “many federal employees are in white collar occupations that often command high pay,” so that may account for a small part of the disparity.

The WSJ states that “one market test is the voluntary quit rate of these workers, and data for recent years show that rate for federal employees is only one-fourth that in private sector occupations. High-paying federal jobs are so coveted that they are now like rent-controlled apartments in Manhattan: Once you’ve got one, you hold on to it for life.”

It seems to me that there is something deeper behind a number of these phenomena. Edwards hints at this element when he notes, “Federal workers’ unions try to convince Congress that their members suffer from a ‘pay gap’ with the private sector.”

Labor union membership in the private sector has declined steadily and stands at about 8%. By contrast, in the government sector labor union membership stands at around 37%.

This is itself a huge disparity, and one that I would think has large effects on issues of pay, benefits, and job security. Thus, I think there has to be a link between the rates of union membership and compensation between the public and private sectors.

As Dr. Charles Baird notes in a radio interview (mp3), “In the government sector there is no declining unionism, none at all.” And given how good the compensation and security of the jobs in the government sector are, why should there be?

More at Chris Edwards’ related post on Cato@Liberty.

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor in Business and Society at 08:54 | Comments (3) | Trackback

Defined tags for this entry:
chris edwards, employment, federal, government, public sector, unionism, worker compensation