May 13, 2021
Low-wage workers in the US are seeing their pay increase en masse, and McDonald’s is the latest employer to boost wages.
As it looks to hire 10,000 new US employees over the next few months, the fast-food chain announced today it is raising the hourly wages for more than 36,500 employees at its company-owned restaurants by an average of 10%. Entry-level workers will earn between $11 to $17 an hour, and shift managers will earn between $15 to $20 an hour, depending on location.
The company says it expects average hourly wages to reach $15 an hour by 2024. McDonald’s owns just about 5% of its 13,900 US restaurants; the rest are operated by franchises who set their own pay and benefits at their stores.
May 14, 2021
It cost just under $5 million for Colonial Pipeline, the company that operates the largest fuel pipeline in the US, to pay off a gang of cybercriminals that hacked its servers, shut off the flow of oil and gas, and disrupted fuel supplies across the east coast. The company caved to hackers’ ransom demands within hours of the attack, Bloomberg News reported.
In a ransomware attack, criminals encrypt a company’s data and demand an extortion payment in exchange for a special key that will restore the company’s access to its files. Colonial Pipeline’s decision to pay the hackers flies in the face of most official recommendations. US policy and the standing advice of many other national governments and intelligence agencies is clear: Companies should not pay ransoms to hackers.
May 12, 2021
Few things in pop culture are the same today as they were in the mid aughts. But
Grey’s Anatomy is still airing on Thursday nights on ABC in the US, and it’s still one of the most popular series on US television. Now it’ll keep going for at least another year the last of a dying breed of broadcast TV dramas.
ABC renewed the hit medical drama for an 18th season, Variety reported. Ellen Pompeo, broadcast television’s highest paid actress, will return to portray the eponymous Dr. Meredith Grey. Shonda Rhimes, who created
Grey’s Anatomy in 2005 and continued to write for it until departing for Netflix in 2017, has said the show will likely stay on the air as long as Pompeo is game.
May 12, 2021
The US gained 266,000 jobs in March, far fewer than million new jobs forecasters expected. The reasons for the employee shortage range from childcare responsibilities to health concerns to generous unemployment insurance benefits keeping workers at home.
Now, big chains, in food and services, are increasingly offering incentives from signing bonuses to free appetizers to lure them back. At the same time, big corporations like Amazon and Costco have raised pay to at least $15 an hour, making it harder for other employers to compete with them.
The Jobs Opening and Labor Turnover survey from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a record-high 8.1 million job openings in March, with the largest increases in accommodation and food services, state and government education, as well as arts, entertainment, and recreation.