Author: Mark Jr.

As the Office of Personnel Management developed a modern, strategic human resources function that transcends dozens of federal agencies, it got nearly the entire government on the same page—literally.

    OPM was tapped by the Bush administration in 2004 to overhaul the business of government—actually, to make government think of itself as one business when it comes to human capital management.

    It set about that task by bringing together 24 federal agencies to hash out visions and goals for a standardized, interoperable, government-wide HR function. The talks produced “seminal” reports, says Norm Enger, director of the OPM’s HR Line of Business.

    The foundational document is the Business Reference Model, which describes how the government is being organized around common business areas and the people management processes that support them. Other documents include the Data Model, Performance Model, Service Component Model and Technical Model. Each can be accessed by clicking here.

    “The HR community in the federal sector is very proud that for the first time they have been able to publish the documents,” Enger says.

Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and the corporate community extended hands of friendship to one another as the new Congress took office last month. But whether that relationship grows or founders may depend in large part on how workplace issues unfold over the next few months.

    Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has sketched what he calls a “grand bargain” between the business community and Democrats.

    In Frank’s formulation, Democrats would support corporate priorities like trade liberalization and immigration reform if business would agree to facilitate unionization and expand health care, among other initiatives.

    But Democrats and business are already parting company over one issue: minimum wage legislation. Many Democrats are backing the House version, which is a “clean” bill, free of amendments. Many corporate interests, meanwhile, support a Senate bill that includes tax breaks for small business to offset the added costs of raising pay levels.

    A more profound split between Democrats and business, one that may help determine the fate of Frank’s bargain, is likely to occur over the mechanics of unionization.

    At the heart of the conflict is a bill that would authorize a union when a majority of employees sign cards approving collective bargaining. Titled the Employee Free Choice Act, it is a top priority of organized labor, a constituency that helped put Democrats in the majority in the House and Senate.

    Republicans generally oppose the so-called “card check” bill, supporting instead a measure that would ensure secret-ballot union elections. Both sides tout their legislation as the vehicle that will ensure fair tallies bereft of corporate or union coercion.

    The first hearing on the card check measure was scheduled for February 8. When it was announced, Republicans on the House Education and Labor Committee immediately released a statement denouncing the bill and declaring that “the honeymoon’s over” with Democrats.

    Fostering more union participation is one remedy Democrats advocate for addressing what they see as increasing inequality in the U.S. economy, or what they call “the middle class squeeze.”

    In a January speech at the National Press Club, Frank cited Wal-Mart’s proposal to staff its stores based on customer flow, rather than traditional schedules, as an example of how a corporation ignores the family needs of its workers.

    “If you have to pick up your kid at school, that’s tough,” he said. “Unions help protect people’s dignity in the workplace.”

    But business interests have indicated they’re going to push back hard. “Unions think the newly elected Congress owes them card check legislation,” says Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “They’re going to have a major fight on their hands.”

    The National Restaurant Association has warned legislators that the card check bill will be one of its “key votes” during the congressional session. Interest groups determine whether they will provide political and financial support to candidates based on their voting records on such issues.

    The restaurant organization so aggressively opposes the bill that it has told Republicans not to sign up as co-sponsors of the measure. In the previous Congress, the bill garnered more than 215 co-sponsors, including several Republicans.

    “That’s not acceptable,” says Steven Anderson, president and CEO of the association. “This is very, very important as we move on in the 110th Congress.”

Health coverage
    Another issue that business has put at the top of its agenda is health care. In this area, there may be more common ground between Democrats and corporate interests.

    For most Democrats, universal coverage is a fundamental political goal. For businesses, universal coverage may lower health care costs.

    One of the ways to reduce health spending for companies is to increase coverage among the 47 million Americans who lack insurance. The bills for their care ultimately are paid through raising premiums for those who do offer coverage.

    “The cost of health care was the No. 1 business expense in 2006,” says John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable. “That was the fourth year in a row. The current situation is just unsustainable.”

    That predicament led Castellani’s group to create an unusual partnership with AARP and the Service Employees International Union to promote universal coverage. AARP, SEIU and the Roundtable often are on opposite sides of issues.

    Another umbrella organization, the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured, brought together 16 disparate organizations to recommend ways to achieve universal coverage by expanding a federal-state program for children and broadening Medicare to insure more adults.

    Whether the Roundtable, AARP and SEIU will agree on precisely how to achieve universal care remains to be seen. But Castellani is not focused on that at the moment.

    “We want the political environment to be such that the government takes on the issue,” he says.

    Political reality, however, may prevent major health care reform. For the first time in a generation, contestants in the presidential campaign will be vying for an open seat, creating a free-for-all in both parties. And Republicans will try to wrest control of Capitol Hill away from Democrats in the next election. Health care progress may become a casualty of political warfare.

    “I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of anything major happening between now and 2008,” says Andrew Webber, president and CEO of the National Business Coalition on Health.

Stalled, but optomistic
    Although seminal change in the health care system may be too much for Congress to accomplish, some observers are optimistic that Democrats and the business community can form a solid relationship, despite the perception that it’s Republicans who are more sympathetic to the corporate agenda.

    One reason for the bright outlook is that many of the candidates who were in the vanguard of the Democratic takeover are more conservative than the party’s liberal Capitol Hill veterans.

    All Democrats will be under pressure to produce legislative accomplishments to satisfy an electorate that prefers divided government and political pragmatism.

    Last fall, voters demonstrated that they care more about solving problems than engaging in partisan fisticuffs, says Gregory Casey, president and CEO of the Business-Industry Political Action Committee. He also asserts that even though such voters put Democrats in control, they aren’t committed to the party.

    Democrats “have a limited window to perform to that ‘fix it’ standard or that borrowed group of voters will move somewhere else,” he says.

    Maintaining voter good will depends in part on a thriving economy—something that Democrats and business both seek. One of the key components to the success of the House Education and Labor Committee agenda is a healthy and growing economy, says its chairman, Rep. George Miller, D-California.

    Miller says that he is talking with business about the need for innovation and a competitive workforce. As an example, he cited a steel manufacturer in his East Bay district in California.

    “Almost everybody in that steel mill is going to school,” Miller says. “They know that unless they can provide that value-added on that sheet of steel every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they’re not going to be in business. This is a radically changing economy. This committee wants to be part of economic growth and expansion.”

    But in order to achieve that goal, according to Frank, Democrats and business need to establish momentum—and his grand bargain can help.

    “Right now we’re stalled,” Frank says. “That’s why the business community should care.”

Workforce Management, February 12, 2007, p. 27 — Subscribe Now!

The overall economic situation is not as bad today as it has been in previous oil price spikes. Productivity has continued to grow and the economy has expanded since 2001, when the latest increases began to take hold.

One reason is that consumers have kept shopping. Unlike the oil embargo of the mid-1970s, energy price escalation during the past five years has come from an increase in demand rather than a supply shock.

Today, China’s ravenous appetite for oil to feed its manufacturing base and the need for Americans to fill the tanks of their sport utility vehicles are major factors in boosting prices. In the 1970s, sudden events, such as the Middle East oil embargo, were the culprit.

The journey toward oil at $70 per barrel proceeded in incremental steps rather than through a dramatic price increase that “captured the imagination of buyers,” says James Hamilton, professor of economics at University of California, San Diego. If buyers are spooked and pull back, it can eventually lead to layoffs.

That clearly isn’t the problem now. Unemployment actually decreased as prices were hitting $3.

Another factor limiting the damage to jobs is the performance of the Federal Reserve. Even when a disaster crops up—like Hurricane Katrina’s ravaging of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico—the impact is muted.

“The Federal Reserve has gotten better at responding to these events,” says Mark Rodekohr, a visiting fellow in the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “They have been able to manage the money supply better than they have in the past.”

In addition, inflation has been driven down from where it was a generation ago. During the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-80, the consumer price index stood at about 14 percent. Today, the inflation measure is around 3 percent.

Oil also plays a smaller role in the life of the U.S. economy today, according to Rodekohr. In the 1980s, energy prices accounted for 14 percent of GDP. Today, they come in at less than 10 percent.

But workers are devoting just as much attention to the cost of filling up their vehicles as they ever have in the past because it remains one of the most influential expenses in the family budget.

F the moment, Americans are enjoying a respite from gasoline prices that exceeded $3 per gallon during a blistering summer. Costs at the pump have declined to an average of about $2.26, but the relief is only relative.

Three years ago, that price would have seemed like a stiff increase from the $1.50 average would have seemed like a stiff increase from the $1.50 average—and it may be going up again soon now that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has decided to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day. This inexorable rise in energy costs has become woven into the U.S. economy.

The primary effect on workers is that they have less money for life’s necessities. And even though gas prices are decreasing, they’re still taking a big bite out of employees’ wallets. At some point, businesses might be forced to make up those differences or face the loss of workers who can no longer afford the commute. Or energy might become so costly that businesses can’t afford the workers—and start laying them off.

It hasn’t reached that point yet, says Harold McGraw III, CEO of McGraw-Hill Cos. and chairman of the Business Roundtable, an association of 160 chief executives.

“You’re going to have to see energy prices a lot higher and more sustained at that level to really influence employment,” McGraw says. Still, he adds, “we’re very concerned about the cost of living expenses that the American worker is enduring.”

In a statement accompanying the National Association of Manufacturers’ Labor Day report, president John Engler asserts that because energy prices have increased 23 percent over the past year, real wages have fallen by 0.5 percent.

A July study by the Congressional Budget Office makes a similar argument. “Real household income has grown less rapidly in the past few years than it would have if energy prices had not risen substantially,” it states. “Households are spending much more on energy goods and services today than they were in 2003.”

The declining income could discourage potential workers who might be considering starting a job hunt.

“There will be some people on the margin who won’t go into the labor force,” says William Helkie, a senior advisor at the Energy Information Administration. “You expect to stay at full employment, but full employment will be lower than you would otherwise expect”

The Economic Policy Institute says that monthly employment increased by an average 190,000 per month in 2005. In the first quarter of this year, that number dropped to 176,000, and in the second quarter it fell to 112,000.

In addition to keeping people out of the labor market, higher energy prices are now starting to take a toll on companies. The Business Roundtable’s third-quarter economic outlook survey came in at 82.4, a decline from 98.6 in the second quarter.

The group surveyed 109 CEOs between August 25 and September 8. A reading above 50 indicates that the executives forecast economic expansion. The business leaders are assuming 3 percent economic growth in 2006.

The forecast is tempered because companies are having varying degrees of success in coping with higher energy prices. The survey indicated that 23 percent were unable to pass any of the increase along to consumers and absorbed all of the costs.

“In the third quarter, we’re starting to see the effects of higher interest rates and higher energy prices on business growth,” McGraw says.

Even though future economic prospects have moderated, the immediate gas price crunch has abated. Still, companies that want to retain their top employees might want to help them cope with the underlying upward trend in prices.

Doing so will help them stand out as an attractive place to work—an aura that could reap benefits in a tighter job market. If companies are chasing after a smaller pool of workers, they will have more leverage to make demands.

“They’re going to be a lot more vocal about employers helping them with fuel prices,” says Melanie Holmes, vice president of corporate affairs at Manpower Inc. “Companies are going to have to work much harder to be employers of choice in their community.”

Among the programs that some companies implemented during the summer price hike were ride sharing, mass transit discounts, mileage reimbursement, gasoline subsidies, flexible time schedules and incentives to carpool or ride a bicycle to work.

One of the most popular tactics was to allow more employees to telecommute. This phenomenon is growing based on a variety of factors, but recently gas prices have become a primary cause.

Yoh, a technology employment and outsourcing firm, surveyed 198 human resources managers at June’s Society for Human Resource Management annual conference and found that 81 percent of hiring managers have policies that allow employees to work from a remote location.

The poll also showed that 67 percent believe that telecommuting will grow during the next two years. A Manpower poll released July 11, when gas prices were nearing their highest point, found that 6 percent of 900 employees said their companies were implementing programs, including telecommuting, to help employees with energy costs.

Of course, the flip side of the Manpower poll means that 94 percent surveyed said their companies were not responding to rising prices at the pump.

“We tend not to do things until we really feel the pain,” Holmes says.

Even employers that want to help are hesitant to do it explicitly through salary increases that are tied to rising gas prices. For one thing, the volatile energy market may do what it’s done this fall-take a downward turn.

“What do they do, get that money back?” says Randy Gartz, vice president of permanent placement services in the central U.S. for Robert Half International.

Besides, the idea that workers should turn to their company for help has not yet been ingrained in the mind-set of the U.S. workforce.

“People predominantly don’t expect their employers to cover the price of gas,” Gartz says.

He noted that even during the height of the summer driving season, people interviewing for jobs didn’t list energy costs as their No. 1 concern. They were likely to look for a new job for traditional reasons, such as the desire to find a new challenge, make more money or move to a different part of the country.

But if gas prices spike again, companies may have employees over a barrel when it comes to mobility. “If people can’t afford to buy gas, they can’t afford to quit their job,” Holmes says.

When the next jump in prices will occur is anyone’s guess. So far this fall, luck has been on the side of the consumer. The hurricane season is passing without a major storm and the U.S. and Iran have addressed their differences through diplomacy rather than war. If the winter is warmer than normal, that will ease pressure on natural gas supplies.

But a storm could blow up or Iran could strike a provocative posture. And OPEC stands ready to reduce supplies again if the price per barrel doesn’t rise to the level it desires.

This fall, businesses will be watching interest rates, energy and home costs.

“The wild card is energy prices,” McGraw says.

Not many kids growing up in low-income neighborhoods of Washington daydream about becoming pharmacists. CVS and the District of Columbia are attempting to change that mind-set.

    This summer, the drugstore chain and the local government are sponsoring a program called Pathways to Pharmacy. The first workshop was held in June during the rededication of the CVS Regional Learning Center in Washington. The facility, opened in 2000, is a joint venture between the company and the District that focuses on hiring and training unemployed residents for CVS jobs.

    The drugstore chain needs as much talent as it can find for its pharmacies. CVS estimates that the retail industry will more than double by 2012 and that several high-growth regions in the United States lack pharmacy coverage.

    CVS wants to draw young people to the profession by sponsoring summer jobs for high school students. It is also trying to attract adults.

    The company established a pharmacy technician apprenticeship program in the District in 1998. CVS and the government developed standards that were approved by the U.S. Department of Labor.

    The goal for local leaders was to put people on a lifelong-learning track that would start with the pharmacy tech position and lead to more schooling and eventually a degree and career as a pharmacist.

    Ebony Harris, 22, may be headed in that direction. She joined CVS as a pharmacy technician after going through training at the Washington learning center. A single mother who had worked at a bookstore, she applied for the CVS program after hearing about it through a program for out-of-school adults.

    Harris, who has always wanted to be a pharmacist, is getting an intimate view of the profession’s challenges. She has helped track down drugs when her store lacks supplies. She also has had to sort out insurance problems.

    “Some of the demands are unexpected, but you can deal with them if you take a deep breath,” says Harris, who intends to start taking pharmacy courses. “That’s what CVS is about—keeping the customer satisfied.”

    Increasing the number of people like Harris who pursue pharmacy will require raising awareness and enthusiasm about the field among youngsters. “It’s not a jazzy profession at all, according to them,” says Gregory Irish, director of the District’s Department of Employment Services.

    One way to pique interest is to highlight the field’s salary potential. The Rev. Lionel Edmonds, pastor at Mount Lebanon Baptist Church in the District, has used that tack when talking to kids.

    “When I ask, ‘Who wants to make $100,000 a year?’ everyone’s hands go up,” says Edmonds, whose church is working with CVS and the government on the pharmacy program. “Then I tell them, you need to study math and science to be a pharmacist.”

    Irish acknowledges that the District hasn’t reached its goals. But some kids have stepped onto the pharmacy path. “It works for highly motivated young people,” Irish says.

Workforce Management, July 31, 2006, p. 26 — Subscribe Now!

While the Rev. Lionel Edmonds leads people to God, he also might help them get and keep a job with CVS. The minister is part of a unique partnership that helps the giant pharmacy chain build its workforce in the increasingly competitive retail industry.

    As pastor of Mount Lebanon Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., Edmonds presides over a 1,500-member congregation. In 2001, he agreed to sponsor a job fair for CVS that attracted 120 parishioners, 50 of whom were eventually hired.

    “He gives us a competitive edge,” Steve Wing, CVS’ director of government programs, says of Edmonds.

    The event helped CVS find workers as it expanded in the metropolitan Washington area. It also gave unemployed people a chance to jump into the labor pool.

    “You’re not just caring about their souls; you’re caring about their welfare,” Edmonds says. “You give folks hope. They get a career track.”

    The relationship CVS built with Edmonds is one facet of its work with government, nonprofit and faith-based organizations. These groups not only help the drugstore find workers, they also help retain them by providing social services. CVS augments retention by linking low-income employees to inexpensive home loans. Beyond these initiatives, CVS is trying to hold on to its older workers through a program that allows pharmacists to work in different regions of the country at different times of the year, thus keeping “snowbirds” out of full-time retirement. In 1990, only 7 percent of CVS’ employees were older than 50. Now that figure is 18 percent.

    Each of these efforts shows how CVS is looking in new places to staff its rapidly expanding network of stores.

    “I would give CVS very high marks for imagination and for tying the (faith-based) initiative to bottom-line business results,” says James Post, professor of management at Boston University and an author of a case study of the company. “CVS is running well ahead of Walgreens and Rite Aid in terms of this critical aspect of their business strategy. It’s about running the business better for investors, employers and customers.”

Powerful allies
    About a year before the job fair at Mount Lebanon, the company established a CVS Regional Learning Center in southwest Washington. The facility is a joint undertaking between CVS and the District of Columbia’s Department of Employment Services. In the front is a District one-stop job center for the unemployed. In the back is a mock CVS store, complete with a photo lab, electronic checkout registers, aisles of merchandise and a pharmacy counter. The center celebrated its sixth anniversary on June 1.

    Post praises CVS for partnering with the government to lower training expenditures. CVS spends about $1,500 to $2,000 to train a new employee in a learning center, but that’s after the government picks up the tab for expenses like rent, utilities, maintenance and security, and also offers tax credits. The final result is about a 50-50 split on costs.

    New CVS hires go to the regional center to train for their first jobs. Continuing workers visit to prepare for new jobs as they move up the company ladder. Among the occupations taught there: pharmacy tech, photo lab technician, shift supervisor and assistant manager. CVS has established similar centers in Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, New York City and Southern New Jersey. It is opening its newest one in Cleveland in September.

    Since 2000, CVS has hired 3,782 people who have gone through training at the Washington center. The retention rate in 2005 was 82 percent—a strong number for retail, an industry in which turnover can average 200 percent. People who have been trained include welfare recipients, ex-offenders, those with no previous work experience and high school dropouts.

    Altruism is not pushing CVS to offer jobs to people whom other employers often leave behind. The company needs to recruit and keep workers in a tightening job market. “They had substantially better retention results than competitors and other employers in the D.C. area,” Post says.

    The D.C. government has helped fill in the gaps that may cause workers to leave their jobs. Many of the new CVS employees don’t have prior work experience and often are in need of other services like transportation and child care that the local government can provide.

    “CVS has been smart,” says Gregory Irish, director of the D.C. Department of Employment Services. “It’s formulated partnerships with nonprofits, faith-based organizations and government in terms of delivering these holistic and wrap-around services to people.”

    Since 1996, CVS has hired more than 45,000 people who had been on public assistance through its welfare-to-work program. More than 60 percent are still actively employed, and the majority have been promoted at least twice.

    That record is made possible in part because of help from CVS’ agency partners. If a new hire starts to arrive late or miss work altogether, the government or an outside group can step in.

    “We have good managers, but they’re not social workers,” Wing says. As workers stumble, they can get help from other sources. And instead of being terminated, “the problem becomes a blip on the screen and they continue to work.”

    That outcome also benefits the D.C. government. It is working with CVS to break what has been a long-term cycle of poverty for many people.

    “What we’re looking at is not only the job placement of an individual. We’re also looking at how long they stay on the job,” Irish says. “Our whole goal is to make sure they become productive citizens and taxpayers.”

    The services the government offers “may mean the difference between their success and becoming unemployed again,” Wing says.

    Retention begins with the right hiring decisions. CVS works with the D.C. employment office to set standards. The government then evaluates potential applicants through a series of tests that measure their skills, aptitudes and personality. For instance, someone who wants to work outdoors or tends to be anti-social wouldn’t prosper in a CVS store, where customer service determines whether the business thrives or dies.

    The D.C. government is not looking for charity from CVS, Irish says. It does benefit when CVS takes people off the unemployment rolls, but in the process the government wants to bolster the CVS workforce, not enervate it.

    “We don’t expect CVS to hire people who are not qualified for jobs,” Irish says. “We’re selecting the people we think will fit the corporate culture of CVS.”

    That culture has produced strong results lately. Second-quarter sales for the drugstore chain rose 15.8 percent to $10.6 billion compared with the second quarter of last year. Same-store sales, an important retail measure, increased 8.8 percent during the same period. CVS operates 6,205 retail and specialty pharmacy stores in 44 states and the District of Columbia, and it employs 170,000. (A breakdown of part-time versus full-time workers was not available.)

A hand with homeownership
    As it does business with CVS, the D.C. government sees the company as the customer and job seekers as the product. In the process, the lines of demarcation between the public and private sectors blur. That starts with the look of the job center.

    What was once a dilapidated building now has a sleek design. It features CVS signs, gray and black interior colors, flat-screen computer terminals, indirect lighting, comfortable cubicles for job searching and steel pipes exposed with a postmodern flair.

    “You can’t tell it’s a government facility,” Irish says. “It has a private-sector feel. That was intentional. It inspires confidence from those who use the services.”

    Rebuilding the job center was a centerpiece of the District’s effort to revitalize the area that surrounds it. Once a rough area, it now features new businesses, renovated buildings, a new elementary school and several new housing complexes.

    Like a proud father, Wing highlights the improvements during a tour. He hopes that CVS employees move to the neighborhood. “They’re our employees. They’re our customers,” he says. “We want them to live in the neighborhood where they work.”

    To help employees buy new homes, CVS has launched a program that gives staff who have worked for two years a $500 forgivable grant and access to loans that are 1.5 percent below the prime rate. Managers and pharmacists are eligible when they’re hired.

    Prescriptions for Homeownership is an initiative involving CVS, Freddie Mac, Bank of America and Mount Lebanon church. It targets the company’s 1,000 employees in the D.C. area.

    The company again turned to Edmonds to introduce the program. The minister conducts financial literacy and homebuyer education sessions at the CVS center. Since its inception, 80 people have participated in information meetings, eight have secured loans and two have closed on houses in the Washington area. The company wants to start similar programs throughout the country.

    Although CVS works with federal lenders and commercial banks, the church connection is key. Many of the people applying for the program live in the inner city and have not had much access to loans. A local minister like Edmonds is someone they can trust to help them work through bad credit issues.

    Those who receive loans must stay with the company for three years. But once they buy a home, employees may feel connected to the company in a relationship that is deeper than a financial agreement. They may find that CVS is a foothold on the economic ladder.

    “It’s a motivational factor,” Wing says. “They see the company as a partner. If they’re bettering themselves, they want the company to do well too. They become an even stronger and better employee because they feel we’re trying to help them.”

Courting older workers
    CVS goes beyond the country’s inner cities to keep its workforce in shape. It has also tapped a growing pool of mature workers. One innovation is the snowbird program, which adjusts work to older workers’ schedule rather than let them slip off into retirement.

    In this initiative, the company offers employees the chance to spend the winter in warm climates, such as Florida, and to work the warmer months of the year in the East or Midwest.

    In the past year and a half, the company has signed up 350 to 500 employees for the snowbird program.

    “They want to work,” Wing says. “If we want the best people, we’re going to have to be flexible.”

    Sometimes CVS must lure a worker out of retirement. That was the case with Dave Johnson, a pharmacist who spends Memorial Day through October 1 in Tecumseh, Michigan. He and his wife, Linda, live in Naples, Florida, the rest of the year.

    While Johnson’s wife is on the golf course, he is working at a CVS store. He rotates among four locations in Michigan and nine in Florida. After selling the two pharmacies he owned and retiring at age 49, Johnson and his wife spent two years traveling. But then he became bored.

    CVS was happy to welcome him behind the counter and set up a schedule that fit his needs. Johnson, now 57, works two 14-hour shifts during the week and every other weekend.

    “I’ve always loved what I do, and I get personal fulfillment from going to work,” he says. “I enjoy the connection with the people. Everybody has a problem; everybody has a story to tell.”

    Bouncing from store to store and between regions also keeps things interesting. “We have things to share from other stores and other ideas,” he says.

    Working for the same company in two different places makes the life of a part-time employee much easier. For instance, Johnson only has to deal with one computer system and one corporate culture. In addition, he has seamless employment, something that doesn’t exist in seasonal hiring.

    “You can’t hire someone for three or four months and then cut them loose,” he says. “You’re not going to find many people who are going to work that way.”

    But CVS, along with some other U.S. companies, has realized that if it structures jobs to suit people who, like Johnson, want to maintain 401(k) and health care benefits, it can tap into a steady and reliable workforce.

    CVS also knows that it’s not just older workers who come to work because of benefits. It’s also what low-income workers are seeking. That’s why the company has developed a benefits package that is available to part-time workers. Making the transition from never having held a job to working 40 hours a week can be tough.

    “They may not be ready to work full time,” Wing says. “But they do need the health benefits, and this way they can get them.”

    Continuing to attract employees from low-income populations is likely to become more urgent for CVS. The company estimates that the retail pharmacy industry will more than double by 2012 and that several high-growth areas of the country lack adequate pharmacy coverage.

    The company’s efforts in the community will help it establish connections that can lead to new hires.

    “They’ve been good corporate citizens in the District of Columbia,” Irish says. “It’s a matter of enlightened self-interest for CVS.”

    For Edmonds, it’s a matter of ministering to his congregation.

    “Every one of them has someone in their family or a friend who is looking for a job,” he says.

    Sometimes, the CVS relationship helps Edmonds put more people in the pews. Once he found himself trying to persuade a young man to come to worship. The conversation focused on the difficulties of finding a job.

    Edmonds says he told the teenager: ” ‘You want a job? Come to church. We’ll get you a job at CVS.’ He was in church the next Sunday.”

Workforce Management, July 31, 2006, pp. 1, 22-28 — Subscribe Now!

When the controversy surrounding the proposed immigration reform legislation finally cools, provisions mandating employer verification of employee status and imposing harsh fines for hiring illegal workers are likely to be included in any bill that emerges from House-Senate negotiations.

    The House legislation, backed in large part by conservatives, focuses only on border security and workplace enforcement. The Senate bill is comprehensive, containing enforcement measures and a guest worker program and providing a path toward permanent residency for millions of illegal immigrants.

    In order to placate restive conservatives who fear voter backlash against what they call “amnesty” for undocumented workers, the Senate can begin negotiations by highlighting the area where both sides largely agree—workplace enforcement.

    Under the House bill, all employers must use a pilot electronic verification system for new hires within two years of the enactment of immigration legislation. The system would check applicants against Social Security records. Within six years, they would have to check all of their employees.

    The Senate bill would make every employer submit new-hire data to the verification system within 18 months of the Department of Labor receiving funds, an estimated $400 million, to implement the system.

    Both bills also would substantially increase fines for hiring illegal workers. Under the House bill, employers would have to pay as much as $40,000 per unauthorized worker, while the Senate sets the top fine at $20,000 per violation.

    Even before the verification system is in place, companies may have to start changing their hiring practices. Charles Kuck, vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, says that tougher work site enforcement would begin immediately, with a significant increase in federal review of I-9 forms.

    “The vast majority of employers have not done I-9 audits, and they don’t fill out the I-9 correctly. Employers want to obey the law, but the law is so hard to obey,” says Kuck, who is managing partner of Kuck Casablanca, an immigration law firm in Atlanta. “No matter what passes or doesn’t pass, there’s definitely going to be an increase in work site enforcement. It’s not just the construction or service industries. It will go through all parts of the economy.”

    So far, about 5,000 employers are participating in the pilot verification program. But Kuck says there is a 15 percent to 20 percent error rate in the Social Security database, which leads to delays in hiring. The system also tends to crash.

    With these problems cropping up in the pilot system, experts wonder whether it can be scaled up to accommodate substantially more activity.

    “I do not believe the technology exists right now to force the pilot program onto a majority of employers,” says Bonnie Gibson, director of compliance at Littler Global, a law firm specializing in international migration and employment issues.

    Beyond logistical concerns, cost questions loom. Rather than $400 million, some studies estimate the system might cost $11 billion or more.

    “It’s going to be really expensive,” Gibson says. “The money is going to come from employers. There is going to be a per-head charge for this verification and it will be left to the regulatory process (to assess charges) because Congress is not going to take that on.”

    House conservatives place a strong emphasis on employer verification and sanctions, calling those steps the best way to shut off the “magnet”–jobs–that has drawn an estimated 11 million undocumented people to the United States.

    “If we have a workable and effective employer sanctions program, then I think a lot of the illegal immigrants would simply go back home because they would no longer be able to work in this country legally,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on May 28.

    A verification and sanctions framework likely will be necessary before the House would consider Senate provisions that would allow 200,000 new low-skilled “essential” workers into the United States each year and would increase by 115,000 the annual H-1B visa cap for high-tech international talent. The House bill does not contain similar policies.

    “Any guest worker program is going to be a gigantic inducement for undocumented workers unless you’ve got the enforcement in place first,” says Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, a nonpartisan immigration reduction organization.

    Although the House and Senate are in each other’s ballpark when it comes to workplace enforcement, the real fireworks will likely explode over the three-tier program in the Senate bill that puts undocumented workers on a path toward permanent residency.

    People who have been in the U.S. for five years or more could stay; those who have been in the country two to five years would have go to a point of entry at the border and apply for a guest worker permit. Illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. less than two years would have to leave.

    House conservatives derisively label such a program “amnesty.” They warn that voters will make the GOP pay at the polls in November if such a policy becomes law. Business groups support guest worker provisions and permanent residency for most undocumented workers, arguing they are vital to maintaining U.S. economic growth.

    “If this debate comes down to amnesty versus border security, the only thing we’re going to produce before the election is an argument,” says Rep. Mike Pence, R-Indiana.

    Immigration reform in 1986 was an example of blanket amnesty, while the current Senate version is something less than that, according to one expert. But the problem with the bill 20 years ago didn’t revolve around amnesty.

    “The failure has been not to address the open borders since 1986,” says Gregory Wald, an immigration attorney at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in San Francisco.

In a borderless marketplace, economic patterns and business practices in one region can determine the fate of a company on the other side of the globe. Increasingly, being a corporate leader demands an international background.

   “You have to have an intuitive sense of how the world works and how people behave. It’s at the heart of the strategic imperative,” says Paul Laudicina, vice president of consulting firm A.T. Kearney and author of World Out of Balance: Navigating Global Risks to Seize Competitive Advantage. “There is no substitute for personal experience.”

   At Procter & Gamble, immersion in the world takes the form of an employee going on an international assignment to learn how business is conducted in another country so that the lessons can be applied at home or in another region. As the European supermarket and discount chain Carrefour has grown into the second-largest retailer in the world, for example, P&G managers in Europe must keep the company’s consumer products in prominent places on big-box store shelves.

   There’s no better place for that kind of education than the United States, home to Wal-Mart and Costco. The company might send junior or middle managers across the Atlantic to gain experience in building relationships with giant stores, which can exert more pressure on suppliers.

    It’s not just business practices that can converge—entire countries can. As Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic integrate into the European Union, their economies may start to act like those of England and Germany.

   “You would want employees to have experience in Western Europe” and transfer that knowledge to Eastern Europe, says Giorgio Siracusa, P&G manager of human resources global business services.

   The majority of P&G’s 140,000 employees work outside the United States. So, a manager who is groomed to take over a top finance position in Russia might go to Britain for a few years to work in a more structured and complex market. P&G assignments tend to follow the Russia-to-England model. Only a quarter of home-to-host relocations originate in the United States; the rest are point-to-point across the globe. When P&G gives employees international assignments, an important part of their mandate is to develop local talent to replace themselves.

   Exposing future P&G leaders to new markets and cultures—39 of P&G’s top 44 global officers have had an international assignment, and 22 were born outside the United States—has produced a deep pool of managerial talent. “That’s an ingredient you must have if you aspire to be a global player in the long term,” says Siracusa, who is originally from Italy and worked for P&G in Poland during the early 1990s.

   P&G chairman, president and CEO Alan G. Lafley was the executive responsible for Asia in the mid-1990s, helping to increase P&G business in China from less than $90 million to nearly $1 billion. Vice chairman Bruce Byrnes was president for paper and beverage products for P&G Europe in the early 1990s.

   As P&G demonstrates, international experience can lead to the corporate suite. “The payoff is that you create a leadership of the future that is not ethnocentric, but has grown up in a global world,” says Gareth Williams, worldwide partner at Mercer Human Resource Consulting.

Workforce Management, April 10, 2006, p. 28 — Subscribe Now!

In a town that’s been focused on Supreme Court nominees, it’s not surprising that Peter Kirsanow takes a page from their playbook when describing how he will serve on the National Labor Relations Board.

    “The philosophy is going to be similar to the philosophy I would expect from anyone in a judicial capacity,” he says. “I’m going to approach each issue as objectively as I possibly can, with adherence to precedent and statutory and regulatory law.”

    Kirsanow is not officially a judge, but he and his four fellow NLRB commissioners adjudicate disputes between companies and unions. The low-profile NLRB could have a big impact on employers as it rules on union certification and the definition of a supervisor.

    Like new Supreme Court Justices John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito, Kirsanow likely will bring a conservative perspective to the body he’s joining. The NLRB, composed of three Republicans and two Democrats, also tilts to the right.

    Unions protested Kirsanow’s recess appointment by President Bush in January. He can serve through 2007 without Senate confirmation.

    “Mr. Kirsanow has taken stands against the minimum wage, affirmative action, prevailing wages, voting-rights legislation and other basic protections for workers and citizens, and he has expressed a marked hostility to unions,” AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said in a statement.

    A member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a former employment lawyer, Kirsanow says he is not against the minimum wage, but does not want it indexed to inflation. He supports affirmative action as it was “originally constituted,” but opposes quotas and preferences.

    The fiercest controversy surrounding Kirsanow to date involves race. Critics assert that he has advocated the internment of Arab Americans if there were another terrorist attack.

    Kirsanow, whose father was held in a Soviet detention camp, strongly denies the charge. “I made it abundantly clear that what I was saying is that the best civil rights for all Americans is that we protect the safety of all Americans,” he says.

    Commissioners’ backgrounds and beliefs matter greatly on the NLRB, says one expert. “There are several issues where the philosophical and ideological approach will make a big difference,” says Risa Lieberwitz, associate professor of labor and employment at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

    Kirsanow does not oppose unions in principle, but he will favor establishing them in secret-ballot votes rather than through a card-check certification, says Charles Baird, professor of economics at California State University, East Bay. “Some people define being hostile toward unions as anyone who disagrees with John Sweeney,” he says.

    Kirsanow will strengthen the NLRB, Baird says. “The fact that he is a black member is a big plus for the board, and it’s a big plus for the ever-growing black community of conservative thinkers and scholars and lawyers,” he says.

Workforce Management, February 13, 2006, p. 14 — Subscribe Now!