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North American Edition
27th September 2021
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THE HOT STORY
Retail and restaurant workers seek refuge in cannabis industry
An estimated 321,000 Americans now work in the legal cannabis industry, as the Washington Post looks at how marijuana jobs are becoming a refuge for retail and restaurant workers. “There has been a seismic shift of workers from retail and restaurants to cannabis,” said Kara Bradford, chief executive of cannabis recruiting firm Viridian Staffing, where she has fielded as many as 500 applications for one opening. “There is a sense that this is a booming industry that’s fun and interesting, with a lot of opportunities to move up quickly.” Ms Bradford explained that hourly pay at dispensaries runs from $12 to $15, in line with most retail and warehouse jobs. But given the newness of the industry, entry-level workers can often move up in less than a year to more specialized positions, she added. Meanwhile, workers' rights groups are pressing for broader unionization in the cannabis industry, calling it a critical time to establish well-paying jobs with proper protections. With the right policies, they say, the industry could become a pipeline to middle-class jobs, much like the manufacturing industry used to be.
WORKFORCE
U.S. ports remain clogged
The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. shipping operations remain clogged as ports, truckers and warehouses struggle to find enough workers or agree on 24/7 operations. Tens of thousands of containers are stuck at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, the two ports that move more than a quarter of all American imports. More than 60 ships are lined up to dock, with waiting times stretching to three weeks. However, participants in each link in the U.S. chain - shipping lines, port workers, truckers, warehouse operators, railways and retailers - blame others for the imbalances and disagree on whether 24/7 operations will help them catch up. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are managed separately and operate 13 private container terminals. Long Beach officials said last week they would try operating 24 hours a day from Monday to Thursday. Executive director of the larger Port of Los Angeles Gene Seroka said his port will step more cautiously, keeping existing hours while waiting for truckers and warehouse operators to extend their hours. Mr. Seroka said: "It has been nearly impossible to get everyone on the same page towards 24/7 operations." The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents the dockworkers, said its members would work a third shift or on weekends, but the pile-up of containers must first be fetched out of the port, so there is space to unload more from ships. “Congestion won’t be fixed until everyone steps up and does their part,” said Frank Ponce De Leon, a coast committeeman at the ILWU. “The terminal operators have been underutilizing their option to hire us for the third shift,” he said.
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RISK
The race to fight off multiple ‘Black Swan’ events
Britain's fuel and food shortage crises, alongside flooding in Germany and wildfires in places such as the U.S., have compelled officials to reassess risk preparation strategies, reports the Telegraph. These Black Swan events, or what disaster planners call “long-tail” risks, are not supposed to come all at once, and Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, a fellow of St Anne’s College at Oxford in the U.K., says we are all prone to “Black Swan blindness . . . Our brains are not well suited for detecting extreme risks.” Prof Flyvbjerg and other experts say Black Swans are becoming more frequent as the world becomes more complex: “the walls are coming down between natural and human systems, with humans impacting nature at a global scale for the first time in history.” Planners are fooling themselves that they have everything covered in their risk registers, and also commonly make the mistake of “letting down one’s guard because a risk has not materialized for a while,” observes Prof Flyvbjerg.
SEC asks dozens of companies for improved climate disclosures
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been sending out requests to the finance chiefs of dozens of public companies asking them to provide more information to investors about how climate change might affect their financial earnings or business operations. The requests from SEC staff in the recent letters focus on risks to companies stemming from potential litigation or the transition away from fossil fuels, capital expenditures for climate-related projects, the potential for lower demand for goods and services that produce significant greenhouse-gas emissions and the effects of severe weather on company operations, among other things.
TRAINING & DEVELOPMENT
Harvard, Stanford, MIT take top rankings in WSJ/Times college rankings
Harvard University has taken the top spot in the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings for the fifth straight year. It was followed by Stanford, MIT, Yale and Duke. The WSJ/THE rankings are based on 15 factors across four main categories: Forty percent of each school’s overall score comes from student outcomes, including graduates’ salaries and debt; 30% comes from academic resources, including how much the college spends on teaching; 20% from student engagement, including whether students feel prepared to use their education in the real world, and 10% from the learning environment, including the diversity of the student body and academic staff.
TAX
U.S. oil producers fail their tax standards
U.S. oil producers including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are among companies that fail to report all their tax payments despite being members of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the global anti-corruption agency has said. The EITI revealed that a third of its members failed to uphold its tax transparency expectation in June, and identified them for the first time. Civil society groups say the oil majors reap the reputational benefits of being EITI members without compliance to its principles. “The assessment was a first step, and work remains to clarify and explain the expectations, but our hope is that it will encourage a ‘race to the top’ to meet or exceed them,” EITI board chair Helen Clark said. Carly Oboth, interim director of the U.S. branch of Publish What You Pay, observed: “We consider it fundamentally untenable for the EITI to be led by a Board composed of members who refuse to disclose their payments.”
STRATEGY
EY names Ginnie Carlier EY Americas Vice Chair - Talent
EY has appointed Ginnie Carlier as the new EY Americas Vice Chair – Talent. In her new role, she will leads efforts to create exceptional and transformative experiences for over 80,000 EY people across 31 countries. Ms. Carlier serves as the executive sponsor for College MAP (Mentoring for Access and Persistence), a multiyear, group-mentoring program focused on enabling and empowering students in underserved high schools so that they can gain access to college and succeed in higher education. During her 28-year tenure with EY, Ms. Carlier has held several key roles, building and leading high-performing teams across three continents. She was most recently the EY US-West Region Talent Leader, where she prioritized the development and well-being of 15,000 people across 18 states, while also leading Assurance teams in client service.
INTERNATIONAL
Amazon’s plan for a regional base in Cape Town ignites protest
Amazon’s plan for a regional base in Cape Town as part of project has precipitated protest from local groups who say the chosen site for the development  is sacred. Some South African indigenous groups say the project plan for the nearly $350m mixed-use development, called The River Club, and where Amazon is slated to be the anchor tenant, is on land that is sacred and should be declared a World Heritage site. Tauriq Jenkins, the high commissioner for the Goringhaicona Khoi-Khoin Indigenous Traditional Council, which opposes the development, observed that the site was one of the first places where Roman-Dutch law was applied to parcel out land to settlers. “This is where the colonial bomb hit,” he said. Dan Plato, executive mayor of Cape Town, said: “[The development] will transform the property from an isolated site with minimal foot traffic to a publicly accessible precinct . . . Cape Town’s ability to attract and host employers and wealth-generators of Amazon’s caliber not only leads to direct employment and economic opportunities, but also improves the city’s profile as a destination for international investment.”
China’s legal system must change to protect sexual harassment survivors
Lijia Zhang, a former rocket factory worker who is now a  social commentator and novelist, writes for the South China Morning Post about the societal prejudice and legal barriers in China that have silenced survivors of sexual harassment. A 2018 study conducted by the Beijing Yuanzhong Gender Development Center indicated that of the more than 50 million lawsuits filed from 2010 to 2017, only 34 of them involved sexual harassment. Of the 34 cases, only two were brought by victims suing their abusers, and both were unsuccessful. The author says the legal system tends to favor the defendant in civil litigation and courts should place more weight on testimony and reconsider the ‘high degree of likelihood’ standard, which is challenging compared to other parts of the world.
U.K. offers thousands of visas to foreign truckers to ease driver shortage
The U.K. government has confirmed that 5,000 temporary visas will be offered to foreign truckers in an attempt to alleviate a driver shortage. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the drivers will be eligible to work in the U.K. for three months, until Christmas Eve, with the scheme also extended to 5,500 poultry workers. Additionally, ministers are to write to almost a million drivers who hold a heavy goods vehicle licence, encouraging them back into the industry. The letter will set out the steps the haulage sector is taking to improve industry conditions, including increased wages, flexible working and fixed hours, according to the Department for Transport. Mr Shapps said: "We are acting now, but the industries must also play their part with working conditions continuing to improve and the deserved salary increases continuing to be maintained in order for companies to retain new drivers.”
Germany to scrap quarantine pay for unvaccinated individuals
People in Germany who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 are to no longer receive compensation for lost pay if they have to quarantine from November, health minister Jens Spahn has said. The government had been paying workers sent into quarantine for at least five days after having contact with an infected person or returning from a "high risk" area overseas. But that policy will end from November 1st, Spahn said after a meeting with the health ministers of Germany's 16 states. Getting vaccinated remained a "personal decision," Spahn said, but that decision would now "also come with the responsibility to bear the financial consequences."
OTHER
Lifting international travel restrictions will boost U.S. economy, says Commerce chief
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says that the decision by the Biden administration to lift international travel restrictions in early November will be a boost to the U.S. economy, especially for tourist destinations like New York and for business travel. To address COVID-19 concerns, the U.S. has barred most foreign nationals from coming to the United States who have recently been in 33 countries including China, South Africa, Brazil, India and much of Europe. Ms. Raimondo said the decision to allow fully vaccinated foreign nationals to fly to the United States "is huge. I think it will really be a boost to our economy, it will certainly be a boost to travel, tourism, hospitality."

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