Word: sectoral
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...benefit gap continues to expand in part because governments face a steady ramping up of collective bargaining demands. "Decisions about benefits changes can't be made instantaneously as they can be in the private sector," says Blaine Bos, a consultant for Mercer based in Minneapolis, Minn. Instead, government agencies have to battle bit by bit for benefit trims that employees can collectively counter by marshaling great passion. In 2005 when California's Governor Schwarzenegger tried to radically reform the state's expensive pension plan, he met a firestorm of protest from unions, and ultimately backed down...
...easier to justify tacking a few fresh dollars onto locals' real estate tax bills than to try and slash the padding on a fireman's health insurance plan. City workers may pay 10% to 20% of a health plan's cost, compared with 30% in the private sector, but you win few local fans when you boost the burden on a teacher or policeman to prettify the municipal bottom line...
Many city workers are eligible for legacy health plans that aren't available to private-sector workers in any but the ritziest of jobs. Some such plans, for instance, offer 100% coverage for basic surgeries with little if any co-pay, whereas private plans may require a $250 to $500 co-pay per surgery. In Massachusetts, for example, many local government employees enjoy benefit plans that have long since been phased out for private employees, who have seen plan standards tighten consistently in recent years. Increasingly, private sector employees across the country end up in euphemistically dubbed "consumer-directed health...
...more eagerly awaiting the incoming Administration than the leaders of the renewable-energy industries. President-elect Obama campaigned on the promise to spend $150 billion over the next 10 years to support alternative energy, like wind and solar, as well as the green jobs that the sector has the potential to create. At California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate summit on Nov. 18, Obama, in taped remarks, reaffirmed that he would hold fast to those campaign promises, starting with mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. "This is a crucial step forward," says Linda Church Ciocci, the executive director...
Indeed, pumping money into the renewable-energy sector while neglecting the antique electrical grid is like building a fleet of cars without laying down roads, but it's far from clear that the government is ready for that kind of investment. In any case, the grid is just one in a very long line of energy priorities that will need to be addressed over the coming decades, as the IEA's report makes clear. Take oil consumption, which the IEA predicts will rise from 86 million barrels a day to 106 million barrels by 2030 (one of the main reasons...