Big Business Asks Congress for Protection from Local Paid Leave Laws
– Bloomberg
During the 2016 presidential campaign, both Trump and Clinton pledged their support for more paid family leave. Now big business is countering the calls with a proposal of its own: Congress should establish a certain optional amount of paid leave and, if companies meet that threshold, they should be protected from state or local laws that might require more. The proposal is part of a report released Tuesday by the HR Policy Association, a coalition of more than 380 major U.S. companies that together employ 9 percent of America’s private-sector workers.
Minimum-Wage Hikes Do Close Restaurants. Just Not the Ones You Care About.
– The Washington Post
An increase in the minimum wage does cause restaurants to close, but only a certain kind of restaurant: the ones that patrons already liked less. A study at the Harvard Business School analyzed almost 10 years of Yelp rating and closure data from more than 30,000 San Francisco Bay area restaurants. By comparing closure rates to user ratings and the timing of the region’s multiple minimum-wage increases, researchers were able to determine how the hikes impacted a restaurant’s chances of closing. Rather than handicapping successful businesses, higher wages appear to shorten the time before unsuccessful businesses close.
Executives See the AI Revolution as Imminent
– Axios
Top executives and decision makers say the widespread application of artificial intelligence is just around the corner, and that they are “eager” to outsource tasks such as accounting and scheduling to software, according to a new survey.
Plastic-Eating Worms Could Help Wage War on Waste
– The Guardian
Each year, the average person uses more than 200 plastic bags which can take between 100 and 400 years to degrade in landfill sites. Scientists have discovered that a certain breed of caterpillar has a taste for plastic and exploration is now underway about how these bugs might be used to reduce pollution and transform virtually all industries that rely on plastic bags.