Joe's Crab Shack Becomes First Major Chain To Drop Tipping

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Joe’s Crab Shack is now the first major restaurant chain to start paying workers a living wage. 

The seafood chain will experiment with dropping tipped-wages in 18 of its stores, the head of its parent company said.

"Servers, hosts, bartenders are paid now higher, fixed, hourly wages," Ignite CEO Ray Blanchette said, according to CNBC. "It's expected to result in an improved team atmosphere, a significant reduction in turnover and greater financial security for the employees."

Employees who were once paid around $2 an hour plus tips will now be paid at least $12 an hour, Blanchette said. Experienced staff stand to make even more.

According to Restaurant Business, the company actually began rolling out the policy in August but only announced the change in a call with investors last week. 

The move follows famed New York restauranteur Danny Meyer's announcement last month that all of his eateries were getting rid of tipping. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is also experimenting with the policy.

The People Taking Care of Our Kids Are Some Of America's Lowest-Paid Workers

The people taking care of America's children are some of the lowest-paid workers in the country, according to a study published Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute.

The report found that nationwide, median pay for child care workers is $10.31 per hour -- 39.3 percent less than the median wage of $17 an hour earned by workers in other sectors. In fact, a look at official data shows that median child care worker pay is only slightly higher than median pay for retail salespeople, which is $10.29 an hour. 

At the same time, child care is prohibitively expensive for most American families.

Given child care workers’ lower median earnings, it is not surprising that they are much more likely to be living below the federal poverty level than Americans working in other occupations.

The poverty rate among child care workers, the report notes, is 14.7 percent -- more than twice the rate of 6.7 percent for other American workers.

The new study, which used Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, follows an October report by the EPI showing that child care is as expensive as a year of public college tuition, making it unaffordable to the typical middle-class American family.

If the first report demonstrates how unaffordable American child care is, the second one shows that the exorbitant cost of care does not necessarily go toward paying the people doing the job.

Elise Gould, an author of both studies and senior economist at the EPI, makes clear that Thursday’s report seeks to raise questions about how the treatment of the workers affects the quality of the care itself.

“Despite the crucial nature of their work, child care workers’ job quality does not seem to be valued in today’s economy,” Gould writes in the report’s introduction.

Indeed there is ample evidence that child care workers’ poor pay has already had a negative impact. Most American day care providers offered care that was “fair” or “poor,” according to a 2007 government study. Only 10 percent of providers offered what the study called high-quality care.

The report also highlights how child care workers’ meager pay is especially harmful to women and people of color. Nearly all -- 95.6 percent -- of the 1.2 million people earning a living as child care workers are women. By contrast, women make up fewer than half of the workers in other fields.

Child care workers are also disproportionately likely to be Latino or African-American. One in five child care workers is Latino, compared with 15.7 percent of other kinds of workers. And 14.6 percent of child care workers are black, compared with 10.6 percent of workers in other occupations.

For the purposes of the study, the EPI defined child care workers as preschool teachers and professional caregivers for infants and young children. All figures are current to 2014.

The report acknowledges that child care pay is higher -- and goes further -- in some cities and towns than others.

But based on the EPI’s Family Budget Calculator, which accounts for geographic variation and measures a broader array of household expenses than the federal poverty level -- including child care, transportation and health care costs -- these people are not making enough.

Over 90 percent of non-preschool child care workers earn less than a single person needs to live in the majority of the 618 metropolitan areas examined in the EPI’s Family Budget Calculator. A single person would need an income of $26,832 a year to live in the Des Moines, Iowa, area, the median-costliest community the EPI budget calculator examined.

The map below shows the percentage of non-preschool child care workers who cannot afford to live in metropolitan areas across the country. Head over here for an interactive version where you can search by zip code.

The slightly higher-paid preschool instructors are still unlikely to be able to afford living in many metropolitan areas.

That is especially true if they have children. In fact, ironically, these workers may have to choose between child care and other essential needs. Day care alone for infants in 32 states and the District of Columbia amounts to about one-third of a median preschool instructor’s annual pay.

In addition to lousy pay, child care workers are far less likely than their peers in other fields to receive health and retirement benefits on the job. Employer-sponsored health insurance is available to just 15 percent of child care workers, compared with 49.9 percent of workers in other professions. And employer-sponsored pension plans are available to 9.6 percent of child care workers, compared with 39 percent of workers in other professions.

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U.S. Job Growth Surged Last Month

WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - U.S. job growth surged in October after two straight months of tepid gains, with the unemployment rate hitting a 7-1/2-year low in a show of domestic strength that makes it almost likely the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates in December.

Nonfarm payrolls increased 271,000 last month, the largest rise since December 2014, the Labor Department said on Friday.

In addition, average hourly earnings increased 9 cents last month. The solid gains added to robust automobile sales in painting an upbeat picture of the economy at the start of the fourth quarter.

The unemployment rate fell to 5.0 percent, the lowest level since April 2008, from 5.1 percent the prior month. The jobless rate is now at a level many Fed officials see as consistent with full employment.

Payrolls data for August and September were revised to show 12,000 more jobs created than previously reported.

With speeches from several Fed officials, including Chair Janet Yellen, suggesting a low bar for a December rate increase, economists say monthly job gains above 150,000 in October and November would be sufficient for the central bank to lift benchmark overnight borrowing costs from near zero.

Minutes from the Fed's Oct. 27-28 meeting and subsequent comments from Yellen have firmly put a rate hike on the table at the central bank's Dec. 15-16 policy meeting.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast nonfarm payrolls increasing 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate unchanged at 5.1 percent.

The employment report joined October's strong services sector and auto sales data in supporting views that economic growth will regain momentum in the fourth quarter after braking sharply to a 1.5 percent annual pace in the July-September period.

Last month's rise in wages, which have been almost stagnant despite a tightening labor market, lifted the year-on-year reading to 2.5 percent. That was the biggest increase since July 2009 and could give Fed officials confidence that inflation will gradually move towards their 2 percent target.

There were improvements in other labor market measures that Fed officials are eyeing as they contemplate raising rates for the first time since 2006.

A broad measure of joblessness that includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 9.8 percent, the lowest level since May 2008.

But the labor force participation rate, or the share of working-age Americans who are employed or at least looking for a job, held at a near 38-year low of 62.4 percent.

Employment gains in October were broad-based, though manufacturing added no jobs and mining shed 4,000 positions.

Manufacturing has been hit by a strong dollar, efforts by businesses to reduce bloated inventory and spending cuts by energy companies cutting back on well drilling and exploration in response to lower oil prices.

Mining employment has declined by 109,000 since peaking in December 2014. Oilfield services provider Schlumberger last month announced further layoffs in addition to the 20,000 jobs it has already eliminated.

Construction payrolls, however, increased 31,000 last month, the biggest gain since February.

The services sector added 241,000 jobs last month, with large gains in retail, health and leisure. Government payrolls increased 3,000 last month. (Reporting by Lucia Mutikani)

Volkswagen's Emissions Scandal Just Got So Much Worse

BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's Volkswagen, already reeling from the fallout of cheating on U.S. emissions tests for nitrogen oxide, said Tuesday that an internal investigation has revealed "unexplained inconsistencies" in the carbon dioxide emissions from 800,000 of its vehicles - a development it said could cost the company another 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion).

The investigation was undertaken by the company after the revelations that many of its vehicles had software that allowed them to deceive U.S. nitrogen oxide tests. CEO Matthias Mueller promised Tuesday that Volkswagen "will relentlessly and completely clarify what has happened."

"It is a painful process, but for us there is no alternative," said Mueller, who took over after CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned in September because of the emissions-rigging scandal. "For us, only one thing counts, and that is the truth."

The news is the latest in a string of problems identified with Volkswagen emissions, which have caused share prices to plummet.

In September, the company admitted it had installed software designed to defeat tests for nitrogen oxide emissions for four-cylinder diesel engines on 11 million cars worldwide, including almost 500,000 in the U.S. It has already set aside 6.7 billion euros ($7.4 billion) to cover the costs of recalling those vehicles - and analysts expect the emissions scandal to cost the company much more than that.

That scandal had already widened this week, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Volkswagen had installed software on thousands of Audi, Porsche and VW cars with six-cylinder diesel engines that allowed them to emit fewer pollutants during tests than in real-world driving. Volkswagen has denied the charge, but faces the prospect of more fines and lost sales. 

It was not immediately clear whether the 800,000 vehicles announced Tuesday with the newly discovered carbon dioxide emission problems were among those already affected. Volkswagen did not identify any models by name.

However, Jeannine Ginivan, spokeswoman for Volkswagen Group of America, said "we are told the issue is not related to the U.S. market."

Volkswagen also did say the 800,000 were "predominantly vehicles with diesel engines," raising the possibility for the first time that some Volkswagens with gasoline-powered motors may also have emissions problems. A VW spokesman did not immediately return a phone call seeking clarification about that.

Volkswagen's board of directors said in a separate statement that they learned of the development "with dismay and concern."

"The board of directors and the committee specially established to investigate will meet soon to discuss further measures and consequences," the board said.

Despite the new issue, the company assured customers that the safety of the vehicles in question "is in no way compromised."

It said Volkswagen "will endeavor to clarify the further course of action as quickly as possible and ensure the correct CO2 classification for the vehicles affected" with the responsible authorities.

In talks with the authorities - whom Volkswagen did not identify - the company said it hoped to come up with a "reliable assessment of the legal, and the subsequent economic consequences, of this not yet fully explained issue."

The news broke after Germany's DAX was closed for the day, but Volkswagen shares ended down 1.51 percent to 111 euros.

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'Candy Crush' Maker Sold To Activision Blizzard For $5.9 Billion

Video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. said it will buy "Candy Crush Saga" creator King Digital Entertainment for $5.9 billion to strengthen its games portfolio.

Activision, which owns popular game franchises such as "World of Warcraft," "Call of Duty" and "Diablo," will pay $18 in cash per King share, a premium of 16 percent to King's closing price on Monday.

The addition of King's highly-complementary business will position it as a global leader in interactive entertainment across mobile, console and PC platforms, Activision said.

"With a combined global network of more than half a billion monthly active users, our potential to reach audiences around the world on the device of their choosing enables us to deliver great games to even bigger audiences than ever before," said Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Bobby Kotick.

 

Video game publishers are shifting to the lucrative digital business from physical sales of games as consumers shift from consoles to playing on smartphones and tablets.

King, which makes games for social media platforms and mobile devices, will continue to be led as an independent operating unit by Chief Executive Riccardo Zacconi, Chief Creative Officer Sebastian Knutsson, and Chief Operating Officer Stephane Kurgan, the companies said in a statement late on Monday.

King, which went public last March, has been struggling to boost bookings, an indicator of future revenue, as new game launches are planned only toward the second half of the year.

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Uber's Surge Pricing Doesn't Do What It Claims To

Uber has long stirred controversy and consternation over the higher “surge” prices it charges at peak times. The company has always said the higher prices actually help passengers by encouraging more drivers to get on the road. But computer scientists from Northeastern University have found that higher prices don’t necessarily result in more drivers.

Researchers Le Chen, Alan Mislove and Christo Wilson created 43 new Uber accounts and virtually hailed cars over four weeks from fixed points throughout San Francisco and Manhattan. They found that many drivers actually leave surge areas in anticipation of fewer people ordering rides.

“What happens during a surge is, it just kills demand,” Wilson told ProPublica. “So the drivers actually drive away from the surge.”

When contacted this week, Uber said that their own analysis has shown that surge pricing does, in fact, attract more drivers to surge areas. “Contrary to the findings in this report — which is based on extremely limited, public data — we’ve seen this work in practice day in day out, in cities all around the world," Uber spokeswoman Molly Spaeth wrote in an email.

The researchers also uncovered a few tips about how to avoid surge prices. They found that changing your location, even by a few hundred feet, can influence the price you get. They also discovered that you can often get back to normal fare levels by waiting as few as five minutes.

“The vast majority of surges are short-lived, which suggests that savvy Uber passengers should ‘wait-out’ surges rather than pay higher prices,” the authors wrote in a new study they are presenting at a conference in Tokyo on Friday.

The Northeastern scientists found that Uber’s price scheme divides cities into “surge areas” and calculates prices for each one independently. The boundaries are not known to consumers. “[T]wo users standing a few meters apart may unknowingly receive dramatically different surge multipliers,” the scientists wrote. “For example, 20 percent of the time in Times Square, customers can save 50 percent or more by being in an adjacent surge area” a block or two away.

The researchers sketched out those boundaries in their paper, and ProPublica has developed them into maps. Uber users in Manhattan can more easily cross from current surging to non-surging zones than users in San Francisco. The areas in Manhattan are smaller, and therefore more walkable; San Francisco’s price areas also tend to surge together.

The Northeastern researchers also found significant differences between the San Francisco and Manhattan markets. While an Uber blog post last year stated that surge pricing “affects a tiny minority of all Uber rides, less than 10 percent of trips,” the researchers documented that the price of Uber in Manhattan surged about 14 percent of the time, and 57 percent of the time in San Francisco. When asked about these findings, Uber said that they sounded unrepresentative, but not outside of the realm of possibility.

Like other online marketplaces in the “sharing economy,” Uber promises efficiency and openness. When using Craigslist, AirBnb, or eBay, for instance, buyers and sellers have the same information about what products are available, and for how much — both sides have a lot of information with which to make price comparisons. Uber is an outlier, these researchers explained, because under the Uber model, neither side of the transaction has all of the information.

“With Uber, the drivers don’t know what’s going on, and the customers don’t know what’s going on,” said Wilson. “There’s an algorithm behind the scenes that determines what the prices are, and you essentially have no idea what’s happening.”

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REI CEO Says Closing On Black Friday Is A 'Radical Idea'

REI will be sacrificing one of its top business days when it closes its 143 retail stores on Black Friday to encourage customers to spend time outside.

CEO Jerry Stritzke told HuffPost Live on Wednesday that the decision to close up shop for the day wasn't "made lightly," and admits that "it's a bit of a startling idea from a retail perspective."

"[We] certainly had to think hard about it. This is new news. I haven't spoken to very many of my contemporaries about the issue, but I'm excited by the idea," Stritzke said. "I think it's intriguing that we can create this conversation [about] something so central to our brand and kind of who we are."

This is the first time REI will close on Black Friday, even though the day after Thanksgiving has historically been a "top 10 business day" for the company, according to Stritzke. However, the company's decision exemplifies some retailers' recent opposition to keeping stores open on what is traditionally a family holiday, and the day after.

Online shoppers will still be able to purchase items from REI on Black Friday, though they'll initially be directed to a blackout screen imploring them to explore the outdoors. Online sales aren't the initiative's priority, however.

"It's easier to leave [the website] on than turning it off," Stritzke explained.

Watch Jerry Stritzke's conversation with HuffPost Live in the clip above.

Want more HuffPost Live? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.

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