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    Caroline Fairchild

    Caroline Fairchild

    Associate Business Editor, The Huffington Post

  • McDonald's Tells Workers To Take Vacations Many Can't Afford

    McDonald's is encouraging its workers to take time off to stay healthy, even as many of them can't afford to take that advice. The fast food giant's personal wellness website, called the McResource Line, is now offering workers guidance on how to eat healthy, manage stress and get enough sleep. The site also offers dieting advice -- telling workers to break their food into small pieces to eat less and stay full -- that could appear insensitive to a low-paid workforce that sometimes relies on food stamps.

  • Here's Evidence That The GOP Is Not 'Pro-Business' Anymore

    For being widely known as "pro-business," Republicans sure are making life hard for businesses lately. For decades, Republican opposition to taxes and government regulation has matched the financial interests of big businesses. As a result, corporate America has kept the campaign contributions flowing toward conservative think tanks and politicians.

  • Walmart Strikes Reach Another Great American City

    Walmart workers from three separate stores in the Chicago area went on strike Wednesday. The walkouts are the latest in a series of worker demonstrations in protest of what associates describe as the retailer's low wages, unpredictable hours and unjust retaliation against workers. The Chicago protests will culminate with a rally scheduled for 4 p.m., Evan Yeats from Making Change At Walmart, a coalition group with ties to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, told The Huffington Post.

  • Study Slams Case For Paid Maternity Leave

    Not nearly as much as some proponents suggest—and especially not if mothers take longer maternity leaves, according to new research conducted jointly by economics professors in the UK, US, and Norway. A paid leave of 35 weeks had no more benefits to children’s welfare, the economy, or workforce continuity than a shorter one. Extra leave and other benefits amount to “a pure leisure transfer,” according to the paper just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

  • 11 Sneaky Ways Companies Get Rid Of Older Workers

    More than half the people aged 50 and older who participated in a recent AARP survey said they had either experienced or witnessed age discrimination in the workplace. Companies looking to ditch older employees can be creative in the ways they try to avoid age discrimination claims. One of the most common excuses used to get rid of older employees is “job elimination.” However, that may just be an excuse for what is really age discrimination.

  • Your Beloved Mexican Coke Is In Trouble

    Mexico’s new soft drink tax could push the nation’s Coca-Cola makers away from the cane sugar that’s made “Mexicoke” a cult hit in the US. Executives from the second-largest bottler of Coca-Cola in Latin America suggested that a shift away from cane sugar might be in the cards as a result of the steep sales tax on soda Mexico’s congress approved on Thursday (Oct. 31). American Coke enthusiasts claim the Mexican version tastes better than what they get in the US, which some say is because Mexican Coca-Cola is made with cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup.

  • U.S. Prisons Have A Big Problem You're Not Worrying Enough About

    Prison health care spending is rising fast with few signs of slowdown, according to a new report from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. One such option for states could be to  expand Medicaid -- an option available under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act -- according to the researchers.

  • Low-Wage Workers Are Robbed More Than Banks, Gas Stations And Convenience Stores Combined

    Low-wage workers are robbed far more often than banks, gas stations and convenience stores combined -- and the perpetrators are their own employers. "The country suffers an epidemic of wage theft, as large numbers of employers violate minimum-wage, overtime, and other wage and hour laws with virtual impunity," University of Oregon economist Gordon Lafer wrote in the report. More than 60 percent of low-wage workers have some pay illegally withheld by their employer each week, according to a 2009 survey cited in the report.

  • The Key Lesson From The Crash Of 1929 That Still Rings True Today

    Tuesday marks the 84th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday. Despite the many decades that have passed, one big lesson of that terrible day is as vital as ever: Our financial system needs strong regulation to survive and thrive. On October 24th, 1929, after several weeks of falling stock prices that marked the end of a speculative bubble, investors started to panic.

  • Something Just Disappeared From The Obamacare Website

    The woman who has become the face of Obamacare has completely disappeared. As the Obama administration works to fix the glitches that have plagued the health insurance marketplace's website, that woman's picture seems to have been removed.

  • The Fast-Food Chains Costing Taxpayers The Most Money

    24/7 Wall St.: The fast-food industry is one of the nation’s largest employers of low and minimum wage workers. According to the National Employment Law Project’s (NELP) newest report, because the fast-food industry pays its workers less than a living wage, U.S. taxpayers must foot the bill in the form of the public assistance programs these workers must use to get by. Based on NELP’s estimates, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the annual costs of providing public assistance to low wage employees working at the seven largest publicly traded fast-food companies.

  • Meet The Man Trying To Stop The World's Biggest Companies From Dodging Taxes

    Hauled before a Senate panel, Apple’s Tim Cook had to explain how an American company whose American engineers had created the iPhone and the iPad was able to avoid paying any taxes on billions of dollars in profits generated by those products — not to United States, not to any country. The only defense the Cook could conjure up for Apple “stateless” income was that it was all perfectly legal. A few miles away in Arlington, a 55-year-old economist named Marty Sullivan sat on a folding metal chair at a card table in the garage of his modest brick home and watched the hearing unfold on his laptop computer.

  • America's Poorest Cities

    Median household income in the United States remained relatively unchanged between 2011 and 2012, after falling 7% from the start of the recession. Income for most of the 366 metropolitan areas measured by the U.S. Census Bureau are flat in the last year, and many are still down significantly compared to 2008. According to the Census Bureau, Brownsville, Texas replaced McAllen, Texas as the country’s poorest metro area.

  • Top-Tier CEO Pay Grew Nearly 15 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Last Year

    The median pay of a CEO at a company in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index rose by nearly 20 percent from 2011 to 2012, according to a new report by the research firm GMI Ratings. In contrast, the median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers rose by just 1.4 percent in the same period, according to data from the Bureau Of Labor Statistics. This is the first time in the 11-year history of GMI's survey that all of the top 10 CEOs made at least $100 million.

  • The Financial Crisis Could Be Impacting Our Morality

    The financial crisis didn't just hurt the economy. It also may have done major damage to our collective moral standards, a new study suggests. After suffering a financial loss, people are more willing to lie, cheat and steal to improve their situation, according to a study conducted by a group of researchers including Dan Ariely of Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

  • Even More 20-Somethings Live With Mom And Dad Than You Think

    The generation that came of age during the Great Recession is still having trouble becoming financially independent and moving away from home, according to a report by the Pew Research Center using recent Census Bureau data. The percentage of young Americans who head their own households is actually slightly lower than it was in 2009, at the peak of recession.

  • Report: The Libor Scandal May Be Heating Up Again

    Deutsche Bank has started talks with some 50 employees as part of its investigation into possible manipulation of the Libor benchmark interest rate, a German newspaper reported. Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the report. Deutsche Bank has said it is talking to authorities in the United States and Europe investigating the setting of London and European interbank offered rates, interest rate benchmarks known as Libor and Euribor, between 2005 and 2011.

  • 11 Countries That Still Have Perfect Credit

    A bipartisan deal was reached to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling on Wednesday. Funding to the government now ends January 15, and the debt ceiling will only be raised through February 7th. In fact, Fitch Ratings warned on Tuesday that it might downgrade U.S. debt amid fears Congress could not find a resolution to raising the debt ceiling.

  • Here's How To Really Succeed In Business As A Woman

    When I started the Corner Office column more than four years and about 250 interviews ago, I set several guidelines for the conversations I would have with top executives about leadership. My thinking was simply to interview leaders who happened to be women, rather than focus on the fact that they were women leaders.

  • Budweiser Is Fighting A Bizarre Problem

    Quite a bit when AB Inbev, the world’s biggest brewer, is trying to build international cachet for its marquee brand. AB InBev is being cornered into calling its flagship beer “Bud” instead of Budweiser in Italy, after an Italian court ruled in favor of Czech-based brewer Budweiser Budejovicky Budvar NP. The bad news is compounded by the fact that Budejovicky, which had previously been forced to stop selling its Budweiser Budvar lager in Italy because of trademark infringements, is now being allowed to re-enter the market.