PhillyInc

Home is where the … business is — at least for women. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 56 percent of women-owned businesses are based in their homes.
In the Philadelphia metropolitan area, which includes parts of New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland, women own more than 165,000 businesses which generate $34 billion in sales and employ 214,000, according to statistics from Center for Women’s Business Research.
Among the nation’s top 50 metropolitan areas, the Philadelphia regions is ranked sixth in employment and seventh in sales generated by women-owned business. — Jane M. Von Bergen

Balancing work and personal life is important, said 96 percent of small business owners who responded to a survey by MasterCard Worldwide. More than half of respondents said it is easier to achieve balance as a small business owner than in other jobs, and 83 percent said they rarely or never miss important personal events due to work. — Henry J. Holcomb

Those guys work so hard, if only they could speak better English. Heard that one before? One of Philadelphia's immigrant-advocacy groups has created something that might be useful to employers looking for help for workers: An online directory of ESL classes. Check it out here. Many groups in the city provide essential support for immigrants, including health care and legal advice. This group, the Welcoming Center, which was launched with help from the AFL-CIO among others, aims to help on employment issues. Its ESL announcement today shows its aim is practical, not political: "Almost one year ago, cheesesteak vendor Joey Vento told immigrants to learn English. Anne O’Callaghan, the Executive Director of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, agrees completely." Thomas Ginsberg

It's official: Minorities and persons of Hispanic origin now account for all of Pennsylvania's population growth. So says the Pennsylvania State Data Center, based on 2006 population estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Three-quarters are coming to be with family members, but it's Pennsylvania businesses that bear most of the responsibility. - Thomas Ginsberg

Wentworth's press release is here and below:

"Specialty finance company J.G. Wentworth today announced that it is has been named one of the top Philadelphia-area companies on the Top 500 Entry-Level Employers ranking on CollegeGrad.com, the number one Internet job search service for college students and recent grads. In 2006, J.G. Wentworth made offers to more than 200 entry-level employees at its Bryn Mawr facility and estimates it will make more than 220 offers for entry level employees in 2007. The hiring at J.G. Wentworth represents a victory in the fight that several area economic development organizations are mounting against migration of college graduates away from the Philadelphia region. According to several published reports, there are approximately 210,000 college students in the area, and historically, just 29% of non-natives have elected to stay in the area following graduation, representing a "brain drain" of highly educated and energetic talent for the region. "We view our hiring record as an important part of our ongoing effort to support growth at J.G. Wentworth while supporting the Philadelphia region," said Michael Goodman, CEO of J.G. Wentworth. "Philadelphia is a great place to do business, and J.G. Wentworth benefits from some of the best colleges and universities in the country from which to draw employees."

-- Thomas Ginsberg

Teambuilding. Is there a more frightening word in the lexicon of human resources? A California staffing agency, Creative Group, surveyed 250 executives about “interesting” teambuilding activities.
Spare us:

- “Team skydiving.” (Sorry, we can’t finish the audit. The entire accounting department wiped out. Yep, earnings were flat.)

- “People would fall out of a tree and hope their team would catch them.” (Let’s hope the team doesn’t include the boss, or his 75-year-old secretary.)

- “Line dancing on a beach in matching outfits.” (There are some people with whom we work we’d never want to be on a beach with, no matter what they wear.)

- “We had to navigate a maze through a cornfield.” (Are you sure it wasn’t the company voice mail?)

- “We created a lifeboat and then kicked people off of it, one by one.” (Isn’t that a layoff?)

- “We shoveled horse manure in a stable.” (Or you wrote the company’s annual mission statement. Only one activity requires gloves.)

- "We took an improvisational comedy class together.” (Except it was held at the same time, in the same place and with the same people as the Monday morning sales meeting.)

The teambuilding activity list comes from the Creative Group. The snide remarks are ours alone. -- Jane M. Von Bergen

Have a favorite, or most laughable, teambuilding experience? Post it here.

Oh, and by the way, here is another chart on where students get their career information. Check out blogs - near the bottom!

So should we expect a crop of weddings in Philly, which can boast of fifteen colleges within its borders, not to mention 200,000 students in the region? Unfortunately not – census data says that fewer than 1 in 4 Philadelphians hold bachelor degrees. And many of those freshly-minted grads still tend to leave to seek their post-graduate lives (and loves) in other cities. The good news is that for each grad who does stay – if this study can be believed -- the better the chances of attracting more.
- David Alff

So what's Philly special "urban innovator" trait? FastCompany executive editor Keith Hammonds tells phillyinc that this region won for its high share of people working "knowledge-based jobs" in industry and academia. In fact, Hammonds says the magazine compared 300 cities using data compiled by acclaimed economist Richard Florida and other sources, and found Philly ranked No. 32, "which is quite strong," says Hammonds. Then he conceded that the magazine used "an anectodal and journalistic angle" in elevating Philly from the No. 32 spot effectively to No. 4. And he says: "The reason Philly landed on the fringe is how do you keep people. Clearly Philly has a problem there." (The magazine's press release is here.)
- Thomas Ginsberg

In response to our email request for comment, Wackenhut spokeman Marc Shapiro shovels it right back and deftly lays Wilson's complaint at the SEIU's feet (thus avoiding the need to bad-mouth Wilson or Casey directly). He calls the SEIU charge just "another high-pressure" unionizing tactic, a description the union might even appreciate. Note that nowhere in his statement does he say explicitly that Wilson is wrong. (See his entire response to us below). In any case, looks like the fireworks in Philly started a bit early this year.

- Thomas Ginsberg

Courtesy www.gijobs.net

This is all fascinating. Was it accurate, even in 2002? If so, we could guess why this is the case and what it might mean but we don't know for sure. (As a wise reporter once told us: "The census provides the answer. You job is to find the question.") Please give us a hand in sifting through this data and finding the right questions.

- Thomas Ginsberg

Courtesy www.legendsofamerica.com

Enter Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), the San Francisco-based finances firm, which recently unveiled a new service intended to simplify the process. The company’s ExpressSend money transfer program promises to 1) decrease or eliminate transfer fees, 2) make remaining charges transparent and self-explanatory, 3) provide users with different transmission and collections methods (e.g. someone can transfer funds from a savings account and collect in cash, or visa versa), and 4) speed up the whole process (same day delivery to Latin America and next day to Asia).

But will this really work? And will it work around Philly? First, a little background: For years immigrants have wired portions of their earnings overseas to relatives in their home countries, where $20, $50 or $100 could go a long way. The international remittance market is worth about $230 billion a year, according to the World Bank. In some countries remittances account for more than 30 percent of the national GDP. Remittances, by the way, also warrant their own public information site, an international conference, and a blog. Despite all this attention, sending money internationally often entails complicated payment structures, heavy fees, and limited transfer options.

Will this appeal to Philadelphia’s immigrants, numbering at least 155,000, and will it succeed in the intense local retail banking market? One the one hand, ExpressSend’s fee transparency will give remittance senders a means of comparing different money transfer programs and choosing the best option. Until now, immigrants have typically relied on whatever is available in their local neighborhood or a company based on brand recognition (e.g. Western Union.) ExpressSend’s multiple transfer options will also allow immigrants to transfer money to recipients who lack bank accounts thus opening up the service to a wider range of customers.

On the other hand, Wells Fargo, at least in the case of Asians, will be going up against those other local banks like Royal Asia Bank or Woori Bank that already offer low-fee remittance services to depositors. And peculiar to Philly, Wells Fargo’s branches are located mostly in Center City, the Northeast and the suburbs, which seems to miss the regional concentrations in Upper Darby, South Philadelphia, Chinatown of folks from its seven target countries (Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and China). And then there are Philly’s sizeable Cambodian, Liberian, Sudanese, Ethiopian, and Russian populations, which could be left out. So is there a market for moving their money, too? Perhaps Wells Fargo might expand services to these countries or set up branches closer to people from the nations it serves.

Still, this does look like a business model that is gathering steam: Nationality-based local retail banking capitalizing on globalized financial markets, all fueled by immigration. Will other banking giants jump into the game?

- David Alff is a communications associate at the non-profit Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, a labor-business support organization.

Opinions expressed by contributors to PhillyInc are exclusively those of the contributors.

Katy Thorbahn, senior veep of the Philadelphia office, says the fast-growing business is looking for "folks to come in with the great ideas and the innovations and what we are finding is that it is hard to find really good people as quickly as we need them.”

The recruiting program is global and covers all of the 1,800 Avenue A/Razorfish employees in 19 offices worldwide, 10 of them in the U.S. The company, which is about to be acquired by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), has 132 employees in Philadelphia and probably will hire 30 more this year. Already in Philadelphia, 58 fresh names have been submitted since the drive started July 23.

If any of the candidates is hired after Halloween, the referring employee will still get an almost-as-robust $2,000, which is the normal referral bonus. Anyone who submits a resume of a potential candidate will also be entered in a company-wide drawing for a $10,000 travel certificate. Employees can also choose to donate part of the certificate to charity.

To stir up interest, Avenue A/Razorfish, posted a recruitment video on You-Tube, starring life-sized dummies posed around the company’s New York office. Here it is:

Similar dummies showed up in the Philadelphia office, in conference rooms, in work stations and in the lobby. In some companies, employees might take that as a threat — as in, you can be replaced by a dummy, but that wasn’t Razorfish’s message. “They were dummies, which is not what we want,” Thorbahn said. “We want smarties.”

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Feeling a labor squeeze? What is your company doing to find the talent you need? Post a public comment, or contact Jane privately and directly at janevonbergen@phillynews.com

PharMerica, based in Louisville, Kentucky, is recently hatched and just started trading its shares Aug. 1. AmerisourceBergen employs about 370 Teamsters in a workforce of more than 14,000, including some in the company’s Thorofare, N.J. distribution center.

Here's a question: Why would the union write a letter that could lead to Amerisource losing business and their members, perhaps, losing jobs?

A Teamster spokesman -- not international president James P. Hoffa -- told PhillyInc that Teamsters’ pension funds are invested in both companies, hence the union's concern. And, he said, AmerisourceBergen should be able to compete for the business in the marketplace.

Michael Kilpatric, an AmerisourceBergen spokesman told PhillyInc that it is standard practice for institutional pharmacies to buy most of their drugs from one company “because it increases efficiency and lowers costs.”

It's also standard practice for unions to have research staffs who examine companies' business performance for investment and organizational purposes.

By the way, Yost is set to leave PharMerica's board next year.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

If u kan rite, u r u-neek. Nearly half of the human resource executives interviewed by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., the Chicago-based employment consulting firm, said that writing skills are what entry-level workers lack the most. Having grown up on computers, these novice workers are techno-whizzes, but can't put together a sentence, let alone spel.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Nothing like covering the auditions for American Idol to reaffirm how powerful people's workplace connections are.
Tara DiOrio, 28, of Prospect Park, is the personal assistant to the executive of a local paint company. (She's the one singing "Walkin' After Midnight" in Philly.com's video) Her boss is paying her to try out. Joel Correa, 18, of Northeast Philadelphia, works at a local Circuit City store. "My managers are so stoked and they want all the nitty gritty," he said.
Jenn Jewell, a senior bank teller in York County, said, "When the radio comes on and there are no customers in there, we all stand and sing." Arleen Alexander works in a Home Depot in the Detroit area. Her co-workers made a good luck banner for the break room and if she gets any further in the process, they've promised a banner outside the store. "It's a great feeling to know everyone's on my side."

- Jane M. Von Bergen

When Gov. Corzine showed up in Camden today for a pre-Labor Day event, he was met by protesting state workers. New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency employees, angered about the slow progress of their contract negotiations and what they say are meager offers from the state, waved signs and handed out leaflets. Corzine, a Democrat, was heavily backed by labor, but that didn't hold much weight with the union, according to the leaflets. “He
can’t go around claiming to be the Norma Rae of the labor movement when he treats his own employees so shabbily.”
- Jane M. Von Bergen

Today's Labor Day parade was a rainbow of T-shirts, each union sporting its characteristic colors. But how many of those are made in America by union members?

That's where Belinda Lader sees her niche. Lader, who was hawking her wares at the Labor Day post-parade party at Penns Landing, works for Geiger Bros., a Maine-based distributor of promotional products, from T-shirts to coffee mugs. Lader, of Lafayette Hill, combs through the company's catalog to find the products that are both union-made and made in America. "I do a lot of research," she said.

It can get really complicated.

"When I work with Unite Here (the garment workers' union), my work gets even harder, because you have to make sure the manufacturer employs the Unite Here union and those manufacturers are few and far between," she said.

One thing obvious from watching the parade is that unions use a lot of T-shirts. So there's definitely a market for Lader's products. But are unions willing to pass up cheaper imports and pay extra for shirts made by their brethren? Lader hopes so. ""The problem is that unions need to come together and buy USA-made items."

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Once again, the Henry F. Kaiser Family Foundation's annual health insurance survey, released yesterday, showed that health insurers' efforts to sell high-deductible health plans haven't met with much success, particularly in larger firms.

That's because, Kaiser researchers said, employees, when given a choice, aren't tremendously excited about having to pay high deductibles, especially if they are low-income and even more especially if their companies don't help them fund the deductibles through a savings or reimbursement program.

That's Kaiser's take, but Ivy Silver, a benefits consultant and president of Commonwealth Consulting Inc., in Jenkintown, has seen a different trend. Yes, companies are looking at these high deductible plans, but they are adopting them with a little twist, she said.

Instead of across-the-board high deductibles, companies, Silver said, are carving out certain benefits, such as surgery, and making just that portion high deductible. Then the companies are self-insuring for that particular deductible. True, they have to employ a half dozen h.r. specialists to sit with their fingers crossed, hoping that nobody has to pay a visit to the OR. But, Silver said, they get a break on the cost of their premiums.

So why do insurance companies keep pitching these products? Kaiser officials had an answer for that too. They pitch them because they are the only real innovation -- other than disease management -- that the insurance companies have to offer.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

We've heard about romances and businesses in Second Life. Now, a wage dispute between IBM (NYSE:IBM) and its Italian workers in the real world is spilling into the alternate online world.

Their union, Rappresentenza Sindacale Unitaria, in conjunction with Union Network International, is sponsoring the first-ever, they say, online strike, asking avatar workers around the world to go picket IBM's Second Life online presense. Read more about it here. (Pictured is IBM board chairman Samuel Palmisano's Second Life avatar.) Avatars are stand-ins for people in Second Life.

It's no surprise that the IBM workers have been innovative in their approach to labor relations. In the United States, IBM contractors formed Alliance@IBM to work through the thorny issues involved in the increasingly-gray zone between being an independent contractor (lots of work, no benefits) and an employee (lots of work, benefits).

Alliance@IBM eventually affiliated with the Communication Workers of America, which is helping to coordinate the Second Life strike in the United States. The Italian workers have circulated an email explaining how to join Second Life.

Here's the fun part -- IBM's corporate Web site home page poses a question: "Could Your Avatar Teach You To Become a Real Life Leader?"

Well, let's see how they do in resolving the Italian wage dispute.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today sent a letter to members of Congress opposing U.S. House of Representatives bill 1644, the "Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradesworkers Act," or RESPECT. (Someone must have stayed up all night working on that acronym.)

This is the perennial issue about how to classify a worker who spends part of his time as a supervisor. For example, some nurses take turns being in "charge" on their floors on overnight shifts. They may be in charge of a handful of workers on a Thursday night. Then on Friday night, someone else is in charge. Or there may be a lead carpenter dividing up tasks among several others at a job site.

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, also wrote a letter. Unions say that these workers should be included in collective bargaining units and be permitted to receive overtime like other hourly workers, because their responsibilities, even as supervisors, are narrowly defined and don't include, for example, the power to hire, fire or demote. They say that companies will require workers to spend a small portion of their time as supervisors simply to remove them from union ranks.

The Chamber's position is that allowing these kinds of workers to be in unions creates a conflict because management workers would be subjected to union rules and union discipline. The provision, it says, flies in the face of 50 years of labor and will end up pushing more management workers into collective bargaining units.

The debate rises from a series of National Labor Relations Board cases on this topic known as the Kentucky River or Oakwood cases (see Inquirer stories here). Even the NLRB has not really been able to sort this out, which is why it is becoming a matter of legislation.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

College students, listen up. The best-paying jobs out there are in engineering, judging by the job offers received by the class of 2007.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that starting salaries for 2007 chemical engineering grads rose 5.2 percent to $59,218 -- the highest pay in any field. Electrical engineers also saw initial job offers in the mid $50,000s. Looking at the numbers by which discipline saw the biggest rise in starting salaries, the engineeers have managed to engineer a nice boost -- civil engineering salaries are up 6.3 percent to $48,998.

Indeed, all business, computer science, engineering, and information technology graduates are beginning with job offers in the $40s. Accounting may have slowed up some. Pay is still great at $46,292, but it's only up 3 percent over the previous year. Only marketing graduates came in under that, at $39,269 -- but that's up 5.6 percent from last year, said the Bethlehem, Pa.-based association, which tracks hiring and salaries of college graduates.

Here's what's remarkable -- or maybe not, given the way the world is -- political science/government majors managed a rise of 6.5 percent, but they still earn a relatively minor $35,261 to start on average. It's also amazing that history majors managed to bring in offers of $35,092, up 6.1 percent. The sad news is that average salaries for liberal arts majors remained stuck in the mid-$30s. And English majors? A paltry $31,924, up a mere 1.7 percent, less than the rate of inflation. (As a writer, I give that a big SIGH.) What's going on with that? We keep reading that people with communication skills are in short supply.

Other news from NACE: Employers predict they will hire 16 to 17 percent more new college graduates in the 2007-2008 class than they did in the previous class.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Women talk about this all the time: Why are men so willing to plunge right in on the job, even when they don't completely know what they are talking about and why, conversely, do women seem to hedge their bets until they are certain they do? Of course, this is a gross stereotype.

But a computer science Ph.D. from Oregon State University, assisted by Susan Wiedenbeck of Drexel University has conducted some interesting research on how this stereotype gets played out in technology.

The Ph.D., Laura Beckwith, picked up on previous research that found that women were less inclined to use a debugging program unless they were fully confident with it. The problem, as reported in last Sunday's Inquirer, is that debugging is an important way to check and troubleshoot glitches in new software -- so it must be done. However, the less confident women relied on other checking methods and actually caused more problems.

Beckwith wanted to find a way to get women to use the debugging program without having them spend 50 years on the shrink's coach getting psychoanalyzed about their confidence issues. So what she did was design debugging software that worked around this confidence issue. If a woman looking at a particular aspect of a software program felt there was problem, she could click an option that said "seems wrong maybe," instead of "wrong." The less confident women didn't like the word "wrong" because it was too definite. "Seems wrong maybe" matched their assessment, and so they were willing to click on it. The debugging program performed the same way in either case, checking for glitches. Clever.

So what does this mean? Maybe software designers, aka tech cowboys, can give a little bit more thought to this important, careful and conservative group of workers when they develop technology. After all, it's not a sin to be careful. We need all types -- men and women who plunge ahead, and others who carefully manage their work. The sin would be to waste this insight and also waste an opportunity to increase productivity among a full spectrum of workers.
- Jane M. Von Bergen

It's hard not to get right to the bottom line in reading a judge's order and Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Mark I. Bernstein's bottom line was impressive: $62.3 million more for Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) workers that a jury found had not been properly paid for rest breaks.

On the way to the bottom line, Bernstein had a great phrase about how "the law in its majesty applies equally to highly-paid executives and minimum wage clerks."

What he was talking about was the issue of fringe benefits -- benefits that are spelled out in contracts between employees (remember even CEOs are employees!) and their companies. In the case of CEOs, Bernstein writes about how, through litigation, they manage to get their "equity interests" or "put options" even though they had received their substantial base pay properly.

The same, he said, should apply to clerks and cashiers at Wal-Mart. They don't have equity interests or put options, but when their manual includes, under the heading of "my money," a promise of paid breaks -- that has to be considered legitimate or supplemental fringe pay, just as equity interests and put options are for CEOs. Everyone's protected under Pennsylvania's Wage Payment and Collection Law.

Wal-Mart says it should not be penalized because workers chose to work through their breaks, as some employees testified in last year's trial in Philadelphia. But other workers told the jury that they had no choice but to work through their breaks. The workload was so intense that there was no time for a breather. The jury agreed with those workers, awarding 187,000 current and former Pennsylvania Wal-Mart employees $78.5 million. The judge's order yesterday added an additional $62.3 million in penalties. Read more about the case in today's Inquirer.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

National Boss Day was today. Not to be confused with International Bite Your Tongue Month or National Kiss Up Week. The idea is to honor bosses for being kind and fair, and definitely not for beating sales' projections or coming in under budget. (Leave that to their bosses.) Created in 1958, it apparently didn't become well-known until Hallmark started marketing cards in 1979. Same criteria today? The staffing-accounting firm Robert Half International Inc. did a survey in August asking how important it is that bosses have a sense of humor: 97 percent said "very" or "somewhat" important. And 87 percent said their bosses actually were good for a laugh. That includes ours. OK, we're off now to ask for a raise.

- Thomas Ginsberg

Not only are National Labor Relations Board members sparring with each other, but the NLRB's general counsel is in a battle with the board's union workers.

In the posh Loews Hotel in Philadelphia, a large group of employment and labor lawyers crammed into a conference room to hear Ronald E. Meisberg, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, speak about his role at the Washington panel that oversees the relationship between unions and companies. You can read more about the conference in Saturday's Inquirer business section.

And on their way in, they encountered members of the National Labor Relations Board Union, who were leafletting in protest against their boss - Meisberg. The union represents 1,000 lawyers, examiners and support staff field offices, as well as support staff in NLRB headquarters and in Meisberg's office. In the Philadelphia NLRB office, 35 to 40 workers are represented by the union.

The union is peeved with Meisberg and has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against him with the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which acts as a national labor relations board for federal employees.

In March, 2007, the FLRA approved union's 2005 petition to consolidate its four separate bargaining units into one.

Meisberg, who had previously served on National Labor Relations Board as a Republican appointee, opposed the idea of one bargaining unit, explaining to the assembled lawyers Thursday that the agency has both a prosecutorial function and judicial function and that workers in each function properly belong in separate units.

Meisberg's argument failed to persuade the FLRA. In June, he sent a memo to NLRB employees saying he would not bargain with them. But on Thursday, he said he will uphold current contracts until the issue makes its way through the courts.

On Monday. an administrative law judge ruled Meisberg's refusal to bargain was an unfair labor practice and recommended that the FLRA require Meisberg to bargain with the union. That would then clear the way for Meisberg to appeal the matter to federal court, prolonging the process. You can read the judge's decision. Download file

Meisberg's refusal to bargain angers union president Eric Brooks, who was among those leafletting Thursday. "I think it's egregious that the person who is in charge of enforcing federal labor law is willfully violating federal labor law himself."

- Jane M. Von Bergen

If Haddonfield's John J. Marquess feels a burning sensation around his ears, it's got to be because of the blasting he received from Philadelphia Court of Pleas Judge Mark I. Bernstein in the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. wage and hour case. We've all read lots of dull opinions by judges, but this one, handed down today, is definitely not one of them.

Marquess of Legal Cost Control Inc. in Haddonfield is the expert that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. asked to opine on what legal fees would be reasonable for the plaintiffs' attorneys, led by Donovan and Searles LLP in Philadelphia. They won $141 million for 186,000 Wal-Mart workers in Pennsylvania who did not get paid for their breaks or for certain time worked off the clock, a jury found in Oct. 2006. You can read our coverage of the case here, including the most recent article about attorneys' fees.

To put it mildly, Marquess did not overwhelm Bernstein with his expertise. In fact, Bernstein puts the word "expert" in quotes in his opinion and prints page after page of dialogue in which Marquess can't remember whether he read a page of testimony or a volume or what he considered in how he came to the conclusion about what the plaintiffs' attorneys should get -- which was not the $49.2 million the judge ordered.

"Apparently Mr. Marquess makes no effort to ascertain a factual basis grounded in the litigation for fee cutting. No part of Mr. Marquess’s business includes any participation, control or even monitoring of litigation itself. He claims no expertise in reducing costs by the efficient management of litigation and makes no cost-saving suggestions to his client or litigation counsel. Mr. Marquess’s only function is to criticize the bills of attorneys who actually face a Judge and jury," wrote Bernstein.

Marquess did not even know the name of the case, Bernstein pointed out.

There's more fun stuff in this opinion. Bernstein describes the incredible amount of work involved in the case which went on for five years from the first filing in March 2002.

"Having presided over this litigation for years, this Court can personally confirm the extensive work, time, and effort devoted by both sides and specifically plaintiffs’ lawyers, pre-certification, at certification, pre-trial, trial and post-trial. The reasonableness of Plaintiffs’ fee request is established by its detailed documentation and the observations," he said.

Bernstein asked Wal-Mart to document its legal costs, and then figured that the plaintiffs' work would be harder because of the complications involved in dealing with, for example, 186,000 plaintiffs.

The court docket numbered 183 pages. "The defense forced plaintiffs to file innumerable successful motions to compel discovery," he wrote, adding, "Finally, on the Saturday before trial, Defendant Wal-Mart served notice on Plaintiffs of sixty never previously identified fact witnesses who they intended to call at trial."

In the end, Bernstein wrote, it took 26 lawyers and 17 paralegals to handle the plaintiffs' case over the five year period. And by the way, it's not over. Wal-Mart plans to appeal and must post a $250 million bond within 30 days.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Stop by Philadelphia City Council chambers today to hear politicians and city officials use this phrase with a straight face and not even a hint of irony. In fairness, it came up in connection with the Pennsylvania Convention Center expansion as a way to talk about minority contracts and employment without getting into the quota quagmire, with its many legal implications. In fact, the term seems on its way to becoming a euphemism for a goal somebody may or may want to meet but has no real actual legal obligation to fulfill.

Whether or not it's legal fig leaf, the term has become pretty popular everywhere lately, in part due to its recent use in pollution-emissions debates: According to the huge Nexis archive, the term "aspirational goal" was used 1,336 times in all English-language newspapers, magazines and other media so far this year. It was used just 224 times last year, 121 times in 2005, 120 times in 2004, 99 times in 2003, and so forth. Aspirational Goal seems to be a certified "buzz term" this year, while the old problems are, well, the same old problems.

Still, just looking at the words: Aren't all goals aspirational? What are non-aspirational goals?

I will clear up all my e-mails. (Yeah, when I'm 90.)

I will treat all my bosses with respect. (To their faces!)

I will manage all my employees with respect. (To their faces!)

Maybe some people set goals without any intention of trying to meet them, like mine with the e-mails. But then, those aren't goals. They're lies.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

Last Thursday, landscaper Joe Shiber joined half a dozen other landscaping contractors at the office of International Personnel Resources Inc. in West Chester to grouse about the H-2B problem. In a nutshell, the landscapers have come to rely on a workforce of laborers on temporary seasonal visas, but those visas aren't available this year.

Landscapers are definitely worried about having enough bodies to mulch, mow and weed wack this summer. The reason they had turned to foreign laborers in the first place is because, they say, they can't get good help here for the $7 to $14 an hour they are willing to pay. (Some say they'd get the help if they paid more, but that's another argument.) You can read the Inquirer story about it here:

After the meeting, Joe, an official at J. Downend Landscaping Inc. in Crum Lynne, Delaware County, was standing around chit-chatting and he told this story: The day before the meeting, a man had walked into his office, which always has a help wanted sign, and said, "I need a job. I'm the best worker in Delaware County."

Fine, Joe said. You can start tomorrow. Show up at 7:30 am. I'll be there, the guy said, but first he bummed a cigarette and five bucks to buy a pack off Joe.

Let's let Joe pick up the story -- this is from an email.

"I also wanted to update you on the employee that I hired on Wed before our meeting. If you remember I told you about a man who walked into my office and asked for a job on Wed. night. Because I am short people to do Fall Clean-up operations I hired him and instructed him to come in on Thurs. morning. He did show up on Thurs but lasted three hours and then simply walked off of the job. This type of thing unfortunately happens all the time and is a prime example of why our companies have turned in part to foreign labor. That is not to say that we do not hire local labor, we do and try to as much as we can. We simply cannot find enough labor to do the work."

- Jane M. Von Bergen

One more little tidbit out of that H-2B visa story -- the one about landscapers who have come to rely on a foreign workforce for temporary seasonal help, but won't be getting it this year.

It used to be that college and high school students had the corner on summer landscaping jobs, landscapers said at a recent meeting. But now the season is longer than their summer vacations and the students are still hitting the books when the landscapers need them most.

Guess why? Mulch! Who even knew about mulch 20 years ago? Now it's ubiquitous -- the brown carpet under every bush. March and April are mulch months, as landscapers spread it by the truckload, making it the busiest time for landscapers, even busier than the mowing and weeding months that follow.

- Jane M. Von Bergen

It was kind of a surprise to hear a union praise Wal-Mart, especially since the retail giant is generally vilified by the labor movement.

But Ann Kempski, deputy director of legislation for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), told a group of area human resource executives that the Arkansas retailer deserves at least some points for opening mini-clinics staffed with nurse practitioners in its stores. The inexpensive care will particularly help some of the low-wage workers -- janitors, home health aides, security guards -- that SEIU so often represents.

"I think that these clinics that Wal-Mart is creating have the potential to be an incredibly transformative thing," she said, speaking on a panel put together by Mercer, a human resource consulting firm, at the Four Seasons hotel in Philadelphia this morning. The panel was intended to inform the group about the political landscape for health care reform.

Kempski said that Wal-Mart's program will improve access and "will help drive down costs" through its use of nurse practitioners for some routine care, instead of more-expensive doctors. "We can not produce more doctors," she said.

Almost exactly a year ago, the SEIU and several others partnered with Wal-Mart, AT&T and other major employers in a joint effort to improve health care. When SEIU's president, former Univ. of Penn grad Andrew Stern, stood on the platform with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to announce the program, it was a shock.

In doing so, SEIU broke with an ally, the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been campaigning hard against the retail giant. Chief among UFCW's complaints has been Wal-Mart's less than stellar performance in providing health insurance for its own employees. Wal-Mart has improved its coverage in the last year, but not enough critics say.

Kempski agreed. "I'm still a critic of Wal-Mart when it comes to benefits for their own employees."

- Jane M. Von Bergen