five years ago, I wrote an article for The Boston Globe about home-based, high-tech businesses in my Amherst neighborhood. I had no idea that what seemed to be a minor […]
Employment
Posted inEconomy
Not all contractors are so independent
INTRO TEXT Employers may be keen to offload workers from their payrolls and contract for services instead (“Lone Rangers,” CW, Summer ’05). But recent cases suggest that companies can go […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
On the Cape new homes for workers go begging
INTRO TEXT sandwich attorney jonathan Fitch doesn’t like the term “workforce housing.” He thinks it’s “gimmicky.” All he and his wife Nancy, who have been active on land-use issues in […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion
Scams and job loss make reforming unemployment insurance an imperative
meet john doe.He earns about $70,000 a year running his own design firm. He’s also been collecting unemployment insurance for 24 years running-and it’s all legal. John Doe is a […]
Posted inEconomy
COUNTERPOINT
support for working families is a worthy cause-one that, as Senate President Travaglini notes, is important to employers. His specific proposals, however, are a mixed bag. Although Associated Industries of […]
Posted inEconomy
Labor Pains
Daquane Mitchell, Wilkerson Catule, and Steve Dufrene, working at Fenway Park, got a break not shared by many other black teenagers. AS DIRECTOR OF the city of Boston’s job training […]
Posted inEconomy
Public pension chaos attracts scrutiny
INTRO TEXT when he was fired three years ago as the state’s correction commissioner, Michael Maloney stood ready to take his medicine – but hoped for a little sugar to […]
Posted inEconomy
Fairhaven loses both taxes and jobs to ATT
INTRO TEXT an at&t call center in Fairhaven will soon close its doors after a contentious nine-year relationship with the town, leaving many people feeling like they’ve been hung up […]
Posted inEconomy
As jobs go off the books immigrants edge out some nativeborn workers
The economic recovery from the recession of 2001, both nationally and in Massachusetts, has been not only mixed, but also puzzling in a number of key respects. Nationally, growth has […]
Posted inEconomy
Bread winners
The business of making things is still strong in much of central Massachusetts, as well as parts of the Merrimack Valley and the southeastern region of the state. But curing […]
Posted inEconomy
Lone Rangers
At first glance, Rick Hill and Lauren Dragon seem to have little in common. Hill, 60, has worked for the past decade as a high-paid software engineer, much of the […]
Posted inEconomy
Flying solo
Additional research by Eric Wagner The self-employment sector is often depicted as a haven for nonconformists, so maybe it’s appropriate that there seems to be an infinite number of ways […]
Posted inEconomy, Education
Job training initiatives should begin with realistic expectations about employers and employees
The Commonwealth has an impending workforce crisis on its hands, but it’s one that’s paradoxical. As a percentage of population, Massachusetts has more college-educated residents than any other state in […]
Posted inEconomy
Immersion journalist Barbara Ehrenreich finds that landing a middleclass job is more of a challenge than surviving on lowwage work
You can’t exactly call Barbara Ehrenreich the left’s answer to David Brooks. But if the conservative New York Times columnist’s book-length observations on the lives of the comfortable (Bobos in […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
Soaring costs threaten effort to insure lowwage workers
INTRO TEXT For workers at Kids Korner Childcare, a Mansfield day care center, the state’s Insurance Partnership program has been a godsend. “It’s been more than helpful,” says Keith Hayes, […]
Posted inCriminal Justice, Economy
Civilian firefighters battle for benefits
INTRO TEXT In the day that 31-year-old Martin McNamara died in the basement of a Lancaster apartment blaze, few people on Beacon Hill gave much thought to what happens to […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Politics
Municipal governments use college internships to snag future employees
INTRO TEXT In 2002, Michael Young was still a Midwesterner, earning his master’s degree in public administration at the University of Kansas. But in order to graduate, he needed to […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Counterpoint
Eric Kriss’s description of public employee unions as monopolies that are sucking resources from cities and towns is more than an unfair attack on the hard-working men and women of […]
Posted inEconomy
Technology upgrade
On a sunny April morning, three dozen people drift into a sterile white conference room at the University of Phoenix job-training center in Westborough and collect in small groups, making […]
Posted inEconomy
Offshore leave
The 4th Congressional District, represented by 12-term Democrat Barney Frank, snakes its way from the pricey Boston suburbs of Newton and Wellesley more than 50 miles south to the blue-collar […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Civil service hiring rules promote mediocrity among public safety workers
There is a public safety crisis in Massachusetts, a crisis of our own making. The quality of our workforce is not what it should be, and it’s our own fault. […]
Posted inEconomy
Cape Cod’s tourism industry shudders at a cap on worker visas
INTRO TEXT Every summer, Chuck Rigg, owner of The Commons, in Provincetown, counts on an influx of Jamaican workers to staff the 19th-century hotel and bistro he operates with partner […]
Posted inEconomy
Blue collar blues
Economist Paul Harrington has lots of data about manufacturing employment in Massachusetts, and all of it is ugly. In 1984, about 670,000 people were employed in making things, or about […]
