If you’ve been a young adult recently (or currently are), you are probably not surprised that 30% of the uninsured are young adults, working adults who are not offered insurance through their employers.
From Healthcare reform’s biggest fans: young adults:
Adults 18 to 29 are the group most supportive of President Obama’s plan to overhaul healthcare, according to a recent poll by SurveyUSA. They are also the age group that most supports creating a government-run health insurance option.
Young people account for 30% of the uninsured population, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy research foundation. They are least likely to be offered health insurance through employment benefits — just 53% of working young adults are eligible for employer-based coverage. And since their incomes tend to be low, buying coverage on their own is usually too expensive.
Experts disagree as to whether healthcare reform will help young adults. Though frankly, if you’re allowed to stay on your parents healthcare until an older age, and allowed to have a government plan, if you are poor or almost poor, I don’t see how this can hurt.
Decorating your cube has long been thought of as the solution to many spirituality at work problems. Unhappy with your boss? Bring in an extra plant. Longing for vacation? How about a photo of you in Hawaii (with a fully-clothed you)? Tired of life without health insurance? How about a calendar with crazy kittens? Pimp My Cubicle demonstrates more of this sort of wisdom:
….you can still show some creativity. Kelley Moore suggests you start by expressing a little flair on the organizational front by using brightly colored file folders and linen-covered containers from Target or The Container Store.
Frankly, I’d like to nominate the sentence above for “Most Depressing Statement about the Modern Workplace.” Unhappy at work? Buy more crap to entertain yourself.
Well, I am beginning this post at 9:45 am. We’ll see what time the baby allows me to finish it.
Meanwhile, I used the hiatus to purge all of my old links. We’re starting fresh, and I’m trying to stay a little more on topic than I have in the past. How long will that last? I dunno.
*The interesting part of this article for me was actually the office rumor mill aspect: Business tycoon’s wife has affair and two children with his business partner.
*The review process is often a painful experience for both manager and employee. But it’s never been THIS painful in my personal experience: Boss beaten with baseball bat after giving poor performance review.
*”I’ll show you the size of my tee!”: Director of Planning and Development fired after exposing himself to woman on golf course.
*I just don’t get why this woman has to dress up as a Catholic schoolgirl while on a charity walk to work.
*If this man was my employee, I would fire him for being an idiot: Trapped in an elevator, man calls his boss rather than 911.
*And finally, the chuckle of the day: Passive-aggressive notes about store closures.
Remember that the cheese loved you more than you loved it. (Woo hoo! Only 15 minutes and the baby is still asleep! This means I can squeeze in another cup of coffee.)
If you’re spending time reviewing your current resume, here’s a list of phrases and terms that you’ll want to remove. They all seem dated:
. Results-oriented professional
. Cross-functional teams
. More than [x] years of progressively responsible experience
. Superior (or excellent) communication skills
. Strong work ethic
. Met or exceeded expectations
. Proven track record of success
. Works well with all levels of staff
. Team player
. Bottom-line orientation
You can find some alternate suggestions here.
Research suggests that chronic fear of losing your job is worse for your health than actually losing your job:
“Based on how participants rated their own physical and mental health, we found that people who were persistently concerned about losing their jobs reported significantly worse overall health in both studies and were more depressed in one of the studies than those who had actually lost and regained their jobs recently,” said Sarah Burgard, a sociologist at the University of Michigan.
“In fact, chronic job insecurity was a stronger predictor of poor health than either smoking or hypertension in one of the groups we studied,” Burgard said.
One simple reason: the stress caused by insecurity. Other research has shown that stress can be deadly, leading to a range of poor health conditions that can shorten one’s life.
I’ve read all 83 comments on Firing Woman for Taking Unauthorized Breaks to Pump Breastmilk Ok, Ohio Top Court Says, and it has prompted me to let out an elaborate sigh.
I do like dress codes. Or at least workplace notes about dress codes, such as one stating that you need to follow the Smart Casual dress code at the Starbucks in the Waldorf Astoria.
Workers in India have found that the stress of being oursourced labor is often more than they bargained:
As many young people in India’s outsourcing industry are beginning to discover, underneath the heady promise of an exciting job, a good paycheck and attractive career prospects lie long spells of night shifts, ruthless targets and the dreadful monotony of writing code or pacifying angry customers.
The outsourcing industry has long been hailed as a key driver to India’s rise as a global economic power. Now, that growth is beginning to take its toll on its workers who labour for long hours in stressful work environments to meet tight deadlines for customers thousands of miles away.
Workers are suffering from obesity, sleep disorders, depression and broken relationships - problems which can lead to more serious conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. In a country where a public healthcare system is virtually non-existent, overworked outsourcing employees could present a health crisis in the making.
I imagine to some of us it sounds very familiar….
Apparently female managers are 137 percent more likely to be sexually harassed than their male counterparts:
Even Heather McLaughlin, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota and the primary investigator on the study, was surprised by the findings.
“It’s sort of a paradox,” she says. “You would expect that having that status and power over other employees would protect you from that behavior.”
Turns out it doesn’t, and McLaughlin’s conclusion is that “because of gender norms, people are still not accepting women in power positions.”