The Missing SeatTOPIC
Jobs, wages, taxes, benefits, household finances and consumer protection. These editorials ask who pays, who is protected, who is left out of the economy and what remedy exists when the rules do not reach everyone.
17 editorials
Il Fornaio agreed to a $3 million harassment settlement. The allegations and company denial belong in the record. So does a practical question: can a teenage worker report safely outside local management?
Read Editorial →Students must choose, sign and borrow on time. Required college program data is still arriving late.
Read Editorial →Women are nearly half of employed America. Pay, promotion, unpaid care and access to leadership need a fuller workforce receipt.
Read Editorial →Federal contractors still owe disabled workers equal opportunity. GAO says the Labor Department suspended the audits used to test that promise.
Read Editorial →Germany's energy law offers eligible basic-supply households a way to prevent disconnection through interest-free repayment and continued supply.
Read Editorial →A coffee-shop settlement raises a practical question about religious freedom at work: can an employee request a workable schedule without risking the income that keeps them afloat?
Read Editorial →Middle-income workers in America and Germany can face taxes, social contributions and disappearing benefits while trying to move upward. A social system needs a floor, but it also needs a staircase that works.
Read Editorial →An average of 1.4 million veterans faced food insecurity each year from 2015 through 2020. A new federal review found that the benefit exists, but outdated outreach and a slowed federal hand-off may keep eligible veterans from using it.
Read Editorial →Workers pay taxes as wages arrive. Extreme wealth can often grow for years before capital-gains tax is triggered. The question is whether work and wealth are being asked to carry a fair share.
Read Editorial →Workers are expected to negotiate one paycheck at a time while employers, investors and industries organize their power. Federal law already protects more collective action than many employees realize.
Read Editorial →A new federal review describes gaps between disability employment programs. The person trying to work should not have to become the coordinator of the government meant to support them.
Read Editorial →A pallet-repair settlement opens a larger question: how much of what we still call men’s work reflects actual job requirements, and how much survives because employers keep treating sex as a qualification?
Read Editorial →An equal-opportunity policy means little if the person expected to defend it can be punished for speaking.
Read Editorial →Familiar products can pass through layers of contractors. Responsibility should not disappear inside them.
Read Editorial →Slavery ended. The hierarchy did not simply disappear. Denied land, controlled labor, segregated housing and unequal public investment became a class structure.
Read Editorial →“Small weekly payments” can turn a lack of cash into a long, expensive poverty premium.
Read Editorial →America trusted Black women with some of its most intimate responsibilities. Trust in their labor did not become equal protection, pay or power.
Read Editorial →