Bentonville, Ar. — Walmart, the world’s largest private employer, is boosting its starting salary for U.S. workers to $11 an hour, giving a one-time cash bonus of up to $1,000 to eligible employees and expanding its maternity and parental leave benefits.The retailer said Thursday that changes to its compensation and benefits policy will impact more than a million hourly workers in the U.S. The company employs 1.5 million people in the U.S.The wage increase, up from $9 per hour for new workers, comes into play next month.The company is also creating a new benefit to assist employees with adoption expenses.CEO Doug McMillon said in prepared statement that recently enacted tax legislation “gives us the opportunity to be more competitive globally and to accelerate plans for the U.S.Large employers have been under pressure to boost benefits for workers because unemployment rates are at historic lows, allowing job seekers to be pickier.The nation’s unemployment rate has sat at 4.1 percent for three months now, the lowest level since 2000. The average for hourly earnings rose 2.5 percent in December from a year earlier. Still, that’s about a full percentage point lower than is typical in a healthy economy.The pay hike at Walmart follows similar actions at rival Target Corp. Target raised its minimum hourly wage to $11 in October, and will raise wages to $15 by the end of 2020.The wage increase announced Thursday by Walmart benefits all hourly U.S. workers within its stores, Sam’s Clubs, eCommerce, logistics and home office.Walmart said that the one-time bonus will be given to all eligible full and part-time hourly U.S. employees. The amount of the bonus will be based on length of service. Workers with at least 20 years qualify for a $1,000 bonus.Walmart on Thursday promised full-time hourly U.S. employees 10 weeks of paid maternity leave and six weeks of paid parental leave. Salaried employees will also receive six weeks of paid parental leave.The Bentonville, Arkansas, company also promised help with adoptions, offering full-time hourly and salaried workers $5,000 per child that can be used for expenses such as adoption agency fees, translation fees and legal or court costs. read more
It will be a summer of transfers at zero cost. Berta manages a list of important footballers, how could it be otherwise. But Atlético will be attentive to players who end their contract or are close to it. There is no other great possibility, because the club’s economy is not for making large disbursements. There are three positions that Atlético could be reinforced with a substitute for Lodi on the left-back, a midfield player and a striker. The club has Morata, Diego Costa, João Félix, Vitolo, Lemar, Saponjic…Simeone works with a team of 23 footballers. He has had injuries and there are not many footballers. Yes a right back and the shots point to Arias. Trippier and Vrsaljko are the title holders. He Atlético could put Arias on the market to enter some moneyor. Saponjic has not played either and could go on loan, but in this case Atlético would not pay money. Carrasco is on loan and the purchase option can be exercised. And Adam ends contract. They are happy with it and could renew it.Only if someone comes out, a bell player will arrive. The squad, which has been through injury problems, is competitive. He has shown it against Liverpool, he still stands in Europe and only his lack of goal has deprived him of a fight for LaLiga. And the new ones have already adapted. Its performance should be greater with one year of experience. Atlético expects a summer at zero cost. The COVID-19 crisis will affect Atlético’s immediate future, an entity that has not stopped growing in its budget in recent years. And it has not stopped growing in workers either. The ERTE announced by Gil Marín is one of the club’s measures to mitigate the great blow that the club is accusing. From a sports point of view there will also be consequences. The club will be very limited when it comes to making signings and the squad, except for some adjustments, will be the same this season.. The great financial outlay was made by Atlético last summer with the arrival of a large number of soccer players, including João Félix, the entity’s most expensive signing: 127 million.The squad will be practically the same and everything will be conditioned to the fact that there may be an important exit. Lemar looks like the player who could leave and it would leave some economic amount in the club, although its value is far from the 70 million that the entity paid. Thomas has a great lineup, but the club hopes he will finish renewing and continue more years with the team. Only if there is a great start can an important player arrive. read more
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—No matter how slowly and carefully you peel an orange, you’re likely to get juice on your hands. To find out why, researchers used high-speed video to capture in slow motion what happens when the rinds of lemons, and navel and Valencia oranges are squeezed or bent. They then applied engineering tools to measure the pressure that built up inside the fluid-filled oil glands that sit just under the skin of citrus fruits. The glands vary from spherical to almost cylindrical, building up enough pressure inside before rupturing that they can shoot droplets out at 10.5 meters per second (faster than an insect can fly or a raindrop can fall), the scientists found. And the droplets go from standing still to top speed in less than a millimeter, being subjected to acceleration 1000 times that experienced by astronauts taking off in space, the team reported here today at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology. The researchers are still trying to figure out exactly how this speed is so quickly achieved and why the oil quickly breaks into small droplets, information that could help them design an emergency asthma inhaler filled with exploding pockets of medicine, they note. read more