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Wilmington council discusses paying ‘living wage’ to city employees

(Star News Online) Wilmington’s roughly 1,000 city workers that officials say are underpaid could soon see their salaries increase.

City Council members spent a considerable amount of time discussing employee compensation during a Monday work session on next year’s budget.

At the meeting, Human Resources Director Jeanne Sexton recommended that the city enact a new policy that pledges it will pay employees a “living wage.”

“We feel it’s important that they be paid a decent living wage,” she said.

Asheville and Durham have policies requiring that city employees be paid a living wage, which Sexton said allows a full-time worker to afford housing, food, transportation, health care and other living costs.

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NC now facing its own cliff for unemployment benefits

(Raleigh News Observer) More than half of the people in North Carolina who receive unemployment benefits – an estimated 100,000 people – could lose those benefits at the end of this month.

The extended benefits provided by the federal government – which kick in for most unemployed workers after their state-funded 26 weeks of unemployment are exhausted – will stop the week ending Dec. 29 unless Congress acts.

While the extended benefits offered to unemployed workers in recent years haven’t been limitless, the state has never faced the prospect of so many people losing their benefits all at once. The unemployed workers who would see the end of payments receive about $29 million in benefits a week, and represent more than half of the North Carolinians who received benefits for the week ending Nov. 24.

“It is unprecedented,” said Bill Rowe, general counsel and director of advocacy for the N.C. Justice Center. “I’m assuming the hurt and difficulties that occur are going to be unprecedented as well.”

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Democrats threaten violence on Michigan House floor

(Washington Examiner)

“There will be blood,” State Representative Douglas Geiss threatened from the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives today as the body debated legislation that would make Michigan the nation’s 24th right to work state.

“I really wish we had not gone here,” Geiss continued. “It is the leadership in this house that has led us here. The same leadership that tried to throw a bomb right on election day, leading to a member switching parties, and came in at the 11th hour with a gotcha bill. For that, I do not see solace, I do not see peace.”

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder had previously said he had no interest in signing right to work legislation this term, but that has changed as unions have made it increasingly more difficult to govern the state. The Detroit Free Press‘ Tom Walsh explains:

Public employee unions opposed Snyder’s moves to put more teeth into emergency manager laws that would enable swifter action to rescue cities and school districts that bungled themselves into insolvency.

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N.C. regulators quickly approve Duke Energy settlement

(Charlotte Observer) As Duke Energy settled both state investigations of its merger with Progress Energy on Monday, the nation’s largest utility hoped to hit the reset button on a $32 billion combination that strayed off track from the start.

Duke foresees an end to the distractions that occupied its management for five months, and new stability in its relations with regulators and investors. Barclay’s immediately upgraded its outlook for Duke’s stock, which rose 15 cents to $63.97, due to the “material reduction in political and regulatory risk in the Carolinas.”

The settlement also adds to the utility’s already heavy workload, chiefly in finding a successor for CEO Jim Rogers.

Under its terms, which the N.C. Utilities Commission unanimously approved Monday, Rogers will retire when his contract expires at the end of 2013. But the settlement also tasks an executive search committee with finding Rogers’ replacement by July 1.

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Asheville area joblessness dips to 6.8%

(Asheville Citizen Times) Unemployment fell to its lowest level in four years for the Asheville-area economy, dropping to 6.8 percent in October from 7.1 percent in September.

The Asheville metro area posted the state’s second-highest job growth for the year at 1.8 percent, netting 3,100 new jobs for the year, according to data released Tuesday through the N.C. Department of Commerce.

“We’re moving in the right direction,” said Michael Brown, an economist with Wells Fargo Securities. “Yes, 1.8 percent of job growth over the year is still modest. It could be faster, but we’ll take it.”

In North Carolina, only Rocky Mount saw higher growth at 2.9 percent, adding 1,700 jobs to a much smaller labor base.

October’s rate was the lowest for the metro area of Buncombe, Haywood, Henderson and Madison counties since December 2008 when unemployment stood at 6.4 percent. As the region felt the bite of the Great Recession, the jobless rate jumped to 8 percent in January 2009.

Unemployment reached a peak of 10.2 percent for the region in February 2010 with 21,385 workers without jobs.

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Asheville Trader Joe’s won’t need Council approval

(Mountain Xpress) Since news broke last week that Trader Joe’s is coming to Merrimon Avenue, reactions have ranged from enthusiastic support to criticism over its location. But there won’t be any showdown in the halls of government: Due to city rules, the grocery chain’s proposed location won’t go before Asheville City Council or the Planning and Zoning Commission for a vote.

“It’s a level I site plan, which means there’s no public process,” Planning Director Judy Daniel tells Xpress. “It’s 13,000 square feet and the threshold for a Level II project — which would go to Planning and Zoning — is 45,000 square feet in that zoning district.”

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Political parties duel in Raleigh over equal pay for women

(WRAL) Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would require employers to prove that differences in employee pay were related to job performance and not gender. Republicans opposed it in a party-line vote, and that fight came to Raleigh Tuesday morning.

If North Carolina is a battleground state, the latest skirmish started at The Cupcake Shoppe on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh. State Treasurer Janet Cowell represented Democrats, saying the Obama administration has been fighting for equal pay for women.

“Women are the ones who are taking care of the family, helping out, paying for college, taking care of relatives. They’re more likely to be giving money out. They’re not earning as much,” Cowell said.

Local businesswoman CJ Scarlet, CEO of Roving Coach International, blasted Senate Republicans for opposing the bill last week.

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Government Tries To Bolster Biofuels Market

(Carolina Journal) The unprecedented goal of creating a biofuels sector in North Carolina, from the planting to the propelling of vehicles with the renewable fuel, “is astonishing and enormous,” Steven Burke admits.

Burke is president and CEO of the North Carolina Biofuels Center in Oxford, created by the General Assembly in 2007 as a tax-fueled catalyst to foster a cellulosic biofuels market from trees, grasses, and nonfood crops.

The legislature allocated $4.5 million to the center in the current fiscal year, down from $5 million in previous years, to solve the still prohibitively costly renewable energy riddle.

“North Carolina will use 500,000 acres of its land to produce 7.5 million tons of new [bio]mass that in $4.3 billion worth of new facilities will make 500 million gallons of fuel” by 2017, Burke said of the legislature’s “colossal” policy directive.

Burke acknowledged “the audacity of our goal, which I characterize as not impossible, just very hard.”

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Study: Arts groups have billion-dollar economic impact

(Asheville Citizen-Times) Arts organizations create thousands of jobs and millions in revenue for North Carolina, according to a new study.

The study shows that nonprofit organizations and other community groups generate $1.2 billion in economic activity in the state, supporting more than 43,600 full-time equivalent jobs and $119 million in revenue for local governments.

This is the first year the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources participated in the study, titled “Arts and Economic Prosperity IV: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences in North Carolina.” It’s part of a national study by Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit that works to advance arts in the U.S.

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N.C. orders uninsured businesses to pay injured workers

Written by Mandy Locke – mlocke@newsobserver.com

(Raleigh News-Observer) Business owners snaked down a dim hallway in the state Industrial Commission’s headquarters Thursday, awaiting stern orders for failing to pay workers hurt on the job.

The message was firm: Pay something. Anything. Make a sacrifice or go to jail.

It was an unprecedented day at the Industrial Commission, a little-known state agency that handles disputed workers’ compensation claims when people get hurt on the job. Commission officials are dusting off opinions rendered years ago and demanding payment. In the coming months, hundreds of employers will be called to hearings to defend themselves and to explain how they will pay.

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Attorney general questions Perdue toll order

(The Rocky Mount Telegram) North Carolina’s attorney general is questioning the legality of Governor Bev Perdue’s executive order placing a one-year moratorium on new or increased ferry tolls that legislative leaders say they ordered in the budget, but Perdue isn’t budging.

In a letter to a state House transportation leader, Chief Deputy Attorney General Grayson Kelley said it is the opinion of the Attorney General’s Office that a direct conflict between a law and an executive order must be resolved through implementing the law.

“It is our opinion that the state law as passed by the Legislature must be followed,” Attorney General Roy Cooper said Friday in a prepared statement. “It was the Legislature’s decision to collect tolls and the Legislature has the authority to remove them.”

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N.C. jobless benefits on the line

(Raleigh News Observer) An advocacy group is urging state legislators to resist the temptation to slash benefits for jobless workers as they seek a way to repay the $2.8 billion in debt facing the state unemployment system.

Cutting unemployment benefits would hurt “the most vulnerable people in the state,” said Harry Payne, senior counsel of the nonprofit N.C. Justice Center.

Moreover, the impact would ripple throughout the state’s economy in the form of “more bankruptcies, fewer customers and more foreclosures,” Payne said Wednesday afternoon during a session with editors at The News & Observer. Payne is a former chairman of the state Employment Security Commission, now the Division of Employment Security.

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US applications for unemployment aid tick up

BY CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER – AP ECONOMICS WRITER

(Raleigh News Observer) More people sought unemployment benefits last week, suggesting that the job market’s recovery remains slow.

The increase also likely reflects some seasonal volatility because applications for unemployment aid frequently rise around the Easter holiday. Many school employees are temporarily laid off during spring breaks and can file for benefits.

Weekly unemployment benefit applications jumped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 380,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The previous week’s figures were also revised higher. The four-week average, a less volatile gauge, rose to 368,500.

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Grove Park Inn Staff must reapply for jobs

By Joel Burgess

(Asheville Citizen-Times) Owners of the Grove Park Inn told the inn’s nearly 900 workers their employment officially ends when the resort is sold and they must reapply for their jobs.

Officials with the new managing company confirmed Wednesday that all employees would essentially be laid off as the inn changes hands, though that would not necessarily mean they would be out of work.

Read more HERE.

AAA: Expect $4 gas in NC this month, and then some

(Wilmington Star News) Expect $4-a-gallon gas this month – and prices aren’t likely to stop rising then. That’s the somber message from AAA Carolinas. The motorist organization Monday said although April isn’t typically a busy travel month, it’s often when refineries do their heaviest maintenance of the year as they switch over to summer-blend production. That reduces supply. Hand in hand with that, demand starts ramping up as we enter the summer driving season. “No one can predict with certainty what will happen to gasoline prices this travel season,” said David E. Parsons, president and CEO of AAA Carolinas in a release. “But we are currently paying 30 cents more per gallon this Easter than last year and 92 cents more a gallon than two years ago. The price per gallon has inched upward by pennies nearly every day since the beginning of 2012.

Read more HERE.