Highland Park and an Illegitimate Supreme Court - Recent rulings on gun and abortion rights have revealed a conservative majority executing a long-standing agenda of radical right-wing ideas. - link
Haiti a Year After the Presidential Assassination - Justice evades Jovenel Moïse’s family and the rest of the country. - link
Restrictions on Contraception Could Set Women Back Generations - The right to access contraception radically expanded women’s economic prospects. By overturning Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has laid a road map for reconsidering that right. - link
Boris Johnson’s Government Is Collapsing in on Itself - In twenty-four hours, more than three dozen ministers and aides deserted Johnson and left the U.K. with gaping holes in its government. - link
Abortion Is About Freedom, Not Just Privacy - The right to abortion is an affirmation that women and girls have the right to control their own destiny. - link
From Vox
What the Supreme Court’s EPA ruling means for air pollution — and your health -
Los Angeles, seen through layers of fog and haze. | Getty Images/iStockphoto
Most Americans breathe unhealthy air, and weakening the EPA won’t help.
When the Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA last week, most of the response was focused on the ruling’s impact on the government’s regulatory power over carbon emissions. The decision limited the EPA from making certain broad regulatory decisions — such as implementing a cap-and-trade program — to control greenhouse emissions from power plants under the authority of the Clean Air Act. While the ruling didn’t get rid of the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, as many environmentalists feared the Court might, it still limits the agency’s overall policymaking power.
Climate action is the main victim, but fossil fuel power plants emit more than just CO2. They also emit air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and particulate matter. Conventional air pollution has damaging effects on health, life expectancy, cognition, productivity, and infant mortality. It’s a risk factor for heart disease, cancer, respiratory infections, and other major causes of death. Even small increases in air pollution lead to negative health consequences. And as bad as it is now, scientists are constantly learning that air pollution is even worse than we thought.
How bad? The WHO updated its guidelines in 2021 to take into account the most recent findings, and under these new, tighter suggested limits, most of the US is currently breathing unhealthy levels of pollution.
Since the new Supreme Court ruling curtails the EPA from implementing “generation shifting” measures that are proven to reduce both CO2 and air pollution, it has implications for health as well as the climate. Regulations and policies that accelerate the transition from coal and gas to renewable energy sources are doubly beneficial, and limiting the power of the EPA to do this — now and in future — will thus be doubly detrimental.
“There’s no greater current external threat to public health and well-being than air quality,” Michael Greenstone, director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), told me.
Bad air is really, really bad for us
Recent research has underscored just how prevalent air pollution is in the US, and the toll it takes on Americans even today, as EPIC’s recent annual report on air pollution around the world demonstrates.The bottom line: Most of the world, including most of the US — especially California — breathes air the WHO says is not good enough.
The US has greatly improved its air quality since the implementation of the Clean Air Act in 1963, particularly in the East Coast, Midwest, and Texas. But no level of air pollution is entirely safe, and air pollution-related illnesses and premature deaths are still a major problem. According to 2019 research, fossil fuel-related air pollution caused almost 200,000 US deaths in 2015; another recent paper estimated that air pollution cost the US $790 billion, or 4.2 percent of its GDP, in 2014. Nineteen of the 20 most polluted US counties in 2020 were in California, due to the state’s huge population, mountainous terrain that traps pollution, warm climate, and persistent wildfires.
EPIC’s report focuses on levelsof PM2.5 air pollution, or particulate matter that’s smaller than 2.5 microns — small, deadly particles that can enter the lungs and bloodstream and are a major contributor to respiratory and other diseases. PM2.5 particles are formed both by pollution directly emitted into the air (such as from fires and dust) and by chemical reactions from nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides (such as from power plants and vehicles). PM2.5 particles are more dangerous than the larger PM10 particles because they can penetrate deeper into the lungs and bloodstream.
The concentration of PM2.5 globally has fallen over the past few decades, but most of this improvement has come from China, which has implemented strict policies that go after multiple pollution sources. The US, which began instituting anti-pollution policies decades before China, hasn’t seen as drastic or globally relevant a shift as China has over the past two decades, but air quality has still steadily improved. PM2.5 pollution in the US is down more than 40 percent from 1998, with the largest reductions concentrated in the South and Midwest.
How the Supreme Court affects air quality
While the EPA maintains the ability to regulate carbon pollution (and the particulate/nitrogen oxide/sulfur oxide pollution that power plants emit in parallel) under Massachusetts v. EPA, its ability to make broad regulations under the authority of the Clean Air Act has been curtailed by the Supreme Court.
The Clean Air Act, enacted in 1963 and amended many times since, put the US on a path to cleaner air and improved health. The 1990 amendments alone, which broadened federal authority to target urban air pollution, emissions, and ozone depletion, are estimated to have prevented over 230,000 premature deaths and millions of cases of disease. And the EPA estimates that the act’s benefits have exceeded its costs by 30 to 1, amounting to tens of trillions of dollars in savings.While most reductions in air pollution death rates across the world since 1990 have come from lessening indoor air pollution, in the US, reductions in air pollution-caused death estimates have been largely driven by reductions in outdoor air pollution — the sort the EPA can regulate.
The researchers I spoke to say the ruling, in isolation, is probably not going to makeair pollution significantly worse. The EPA will still be able to regulate emissions from power plants, vehicles, and infrastructure. “My biggest worry was they were going to use this case to fundamentally challenge the authority of EPA to regulate greenhouse gases,” said Wei Peng, an air pollution researcher at Penn State, and that didn’t happen.
Electricity-related air pollution from fossil fuel sources stillleads to 10,000 to 20,000 deaths per year, said Peng, even though almost all sulfur oxides and most nitrogen oxides have been eliminated through technologies like scrubbers and low nitrogen oxide burners. To get rid of the last pollutants in the electricity sector, she said, “we need to eliminate fossil fuel combustion from the electricity sector … the last mile problem is all about fuel switching.”
But this important move away from coal and gas wouldn’t have necessarily happened through the EPA. The increasingly cheap cost of renewable energy incentivizes companies to switch to wind and solar power even without regulation, and they can be further incentivized through clean energy tax credits. What was strange to Greenstone, at EPIC, is that the ruling took away the opportunity for the EPA to implement a cost-effective policy (cap and trade), while still allowing regulation, which he sees as effectively amounting to ruling “in favor of more expensive climate regulation.”
The Supreme Court, in West Virginia v. EPA, used the “major questions” doctrine to require impactful regulatory strategies to be explicitly approved by Congress, which sets a precedent that could prevent future environmental regulation by government agencies. So while the West Virginia ruling in itself probably won’t make air pollution significantly worse, there are further challenges to environmental laws that also have implications for pollution, and West Virginia v. EPA may make such challenges and limits on regulation more common. Movement away from coal, for example, is chiefly about greenhouse gases, said Peng, but coal is also a major source of conventional air pollution, so anything that curtails the ability of the EPA to drive that transition faster likely will have impacts on air pollution, too.
While federal and state legislators can still take action on climate change — Congress could even still authorize the EPA to do cap and trade — the hard reality is that Congress hasn’t been able to act to address climate change, and shows virtually no sign of being able to do so in the future, given polarization over the environment. That wasn’t always the case: The original Clean Air Act and its important amendments were passed by huge bipartisan majorities, and at least some — including the 1990 amendments — were passed under GOP presidents. Cap and trade itself is a market-based approach supported by Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. But since climate action has now chiefly become a Democratic issue, any legislation around environmental concerns will struggle to pass.
The Clean Air Act drastically reduced conventional air pollution, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. But it’s also a relic of a time when caring about the environment — and its effects on human health — didn’t break down along party lines. As a conservative Supreme Court pares back the powers of the regulatory apparatus, hopes for future progress will fall back onto Congress — and that’s not much hope at all.
Senate Democrats slowly consider their options after Roe -
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Patty Murray hold a press conference about abortion rights outside the Capitol on June 15. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Inside the debates dividing the lawmakers, now on recess.
When the draft Supreme Court opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health leaked in early May, Democratic lawmakers in the Senatescrambled to figure out a response.
They settled on a vote on a bill that had already failed to pass in February, the Women’s Health Protection Act — a bill that would both codify access to abortion and invalidate existing state restrictions on the procedure. But in the wake of the draft opinion, the bill, which the House passed last fall, failed again in the Senate, 49-51. Supporters of the legislation brushed off the failure, stressing the point was to galvanize voters behind a vision that could be realized by electing more Democrats and overturning the filibuster.
Two months later, the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. But Democrats in Congress are still negotiating their next move to protect abortion rights.
Democratic senators, led by Patty Murray (WA) and Elizabeth Warren (MA), have been pushing for a bolder response from the executive branch. Aside from pressuring the administration, the closest thing congressional Democrats have to a strategy is asking voters to help them maintain their House majority and elect two more senators in November. If they do, Democrats could scrap the filibuster for abortion bills, surmounting both Republican opposition and resistance from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ).
Behind the scenes, a debate among Democratic leaders, strategists, and reproductive rights groups that began with the draft opinion leak is still playing out.
Should Democrats hold votes on various angles of the abortion debate that poll well with voters — for example, a vote upholding abortion access nationally in cases of rape or incest, or threat to a mother’s life? These measures likely wouldn’t get 60 votes to pass, but they might get support from a few Republicans, would force others to take potentially unpopular positions ahead of the midterm elections, and could demonstrate majority support for some forms of abortion rights.
“I think a rape, incest, health-of-the mother exception gets probably 52 to 53 votes in favor, and from a morale standpoint there’s just a huge difference seeing something with 52 votes in favor rather than 49,” said a senior Democratic aide, one of several aides who spoke on condition of anonymity.
But other prominent Democratic leaders argue that such votes would be theatrical wastes of time, and possibly even counterproductive: They could give moderate Republicans an opportunityto distance themselves from their extremist party, or undermine the case for broadly protecting abortion rights by deeming some abortions more worthy than others.
In interviews, aides and lawmakers suggested Democrats are also considering another path: introducing reproductive health bills through a process called unanimous consent. This parliamentary tactic could allow Democrats to bring up abortion issues often and blame Republicans when measures — even moderate or popular ones — fail. But only one senator is needed to block unanimous consent bills, so this wouldn’t get every lawmaker on record or offer the televised drama of a full vote.
Still, two weeks after Roe fell, there remains no organized plan. The Supreme Court decision came down on the morning of Friday, June 24. Lawmakers left for recess that weekend and do not return until July 11.
“Given that we had a leak draft of the opinion, I don’t know why there wasn’t an outline of all the things that we’d be voting on if Roe were overturned,” said a senior Democratic Senate aide. “If you could have gotten consensus around having a vote around a rape, incest, or health exception bill, or a bill on medication abortion, or on IVF, or contraception access, that all could have been ready to go the day the Supreme Court ruled.”
The Women’s Health Protection Act is Democrats’ effort to codify Roe
For the past year, Democrats have rallied around the Women’s Health Protection Act,legislation that lawmakers say would codify Roe into law, but would also override many state restrictions tomake abortion more accessible.
Since the Supreme Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, states have been allowed to enact abortion restrictions as long as the restrictions do not present an “undue burden” on someone seeking to end a pregnancy. (What constitutes an “undue burden” is vague and heavily contested.) Nearly 500 restrictions have been passed by state and local governments since 2011, and the Women’s Health Protection Act would overridemost of these laws by invalidating medically unnecessary state restrictions, such asrequirements for ultrasounds, parental consent, mandatory waiting periods, and admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
Mary Ziegler, a legal historian at Florida State University, told the 19th News in February that while it’s difficult to say whether the Women’s Health Protection Act is broader than Roe, it “definitely disallows more restrictions than the current interpretation of Roe/Casey.”
Reproductive health groups have been all-in on the bill, including urging the overturn of the Senate filibuster if necessary to get it passed. But in February, it failed 46-48, with almost all present Democrats voting in favor of opening debate on the bill, and no Republicans doing so. In the wake of the leaked draft overturning Roe, it hardly fared better, not reaching majority support.
Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, flanked by Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Patty Murray, speaks during a news conference on the Women’s Health Protection Act at the Capitol on February 28.
The only Democrat in opposition was Manchin, who sayshe would support legislation to codify Roebut sees the Women’s Health Protection Act as going beyond the narrower Roe and Casey standards.
Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK), two Republicans who likewise support legislation to codify Roe, have also objected to the fact that the Women’s Health Protection Act would override states that have permitted religious exemptions for abortion providers. Following the overturn of Roe, Collins reiterated her position that abortion should be legal nationwide, though she supports allowing states to “account for regional differences with regulations like parental notification requirements.”
In February, Murkowski and Collins released their own bill, the Reproductive Choice Act, which would codify Roe and Casey, but also ensure that any existing religious conscience exceptions could stay in place. States could continue to enact abortion regulations so long as they don’t “have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy.”
The bill picked up no co-sponsors, and was blasted as a harmful step backward by Democrats and reproductive health groups. “Senators Collins and Murkowski are trying to muddy the waters by pushing a flimsy bill that claims to codify the right to abortion into law but actually weakens the protections we have under current law,” NARAL Pro-Choice America said in a statement.
Sens. Tim Kaine, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski are working on a bipartisan bill
Democrats argue it’s a waste of time to expect any other Republicans to come on board with the Collins-Murkowski bill. The entire Republican Senate caucus except Collins and Murkowski, for example, recently voted for a measure that would strip federal funding for cancer screenings, STI testing, and birth control from health providers if they refer any patient for an abortion.
“This isn’t like the gun bill,” a Democratic aide said, referring to the bipartisan gun bill President Joe Biden signed into law last month. “There aren’t 10 votes there to find.”
Still,Murkowski and Collins have been working with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) on a potential bipartisan bill, though they have not made anything public so far.
Even if their bill couldn’t reach 60 votes, Kaine has said he thinks there’s value in a compromise measure that could command bipartisan majority support in Congress, especially since courts are still grappling with the issue of abortion rights.
A spokesperson for Kaine told Vox that the senator “is examining the [Supreme Court] opinion and talking to colleagues to determine how best … to find bipartisan support to federally protect reproductive freedom.”
For now, Democrats and reproductive rights groups are skeptical. If Collins and Murkowski are not willing to change the filibuster, then their efforts at drafting a compromise bill are “nothing more than a political stunt that should not be taken seriously,” NARAL president Mini Timmaraju told Vox.
Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, said she’d need to know whether the Kaine-Collins-Murkowski proposal would protect people from the kinds of restrictions previously passedin states like Texas, where private citizens can now file lawsuits against providers and anyone suspected to “aid and abet” an illegal abortion.
“Would the bill protect people in those circumstances?” she asked. “And I don’t know the answer to that, but I think that is the question that has to be asked and understood.” Smith said she thinks the focus also needs to stay on how many votes there are.
A spokesperson for Warren declined to say whether she’d vote for a Kaine-Collins-Murkowski bill ahead of November if the filibuster were overturned, and a Murray spokesperson said simply that the senator “has spoken with” Kaine about his work with Collins.
Should Democrats hold votes on bills that won’t pass to get Republicans on record?
A thorny debate on the Democratic side of the aisle is whether to hold more votes that highlight where Republicans stand on reproductive rights, even if the bills have no shot of passage.
Republicansalready voted in February and May against the Women’s Health Protection Act, but that was an expansive bill. More people are paying attention now that Roe has been overturned, and there is an election coming up. Could more votes help keep attention on the issues, and drive home more clearly where individual lawmakers stand? What about bills barring criminal penalties for women who seek or obtain abortions? Or barring penalties for friends and acquaintances who might assist them? Or codifying exceptions for rape and incest?
For now, most Democratic lawmakers say they are waiting to see what their senior female colleagues want to do, and will take their lead from them. Others say they are waiting to get clearer signals from the reproductive rights advocacy groups, like Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and Emily’s List.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Abortion rights demonstrators block an intersection while sitting in the road during a protest near the US Supreme Court on June 30.
A group of female senators, led by Patty Murray, the health committee chair, started convening in May to explore response optionsafter the draft opinion leaked; on June 7, more than a month later, Murray and Warren led 23 other Democratic senators in sending a letter to the Biden administration, urging the president to lead a national plan to defend reproductive rights. The letter listed seven specific ideas for the administration to consider, including increasing access to abortion pills and exploring travel vouchers for those who might need to go to another state for the procedure.
Reproductive rights groups had first approached female senators with the idea to urge Biden to declare the overturn of Roe a public health emergency, a suggestion Warren and Smith took up in a New York Timesop-ed the day after the Supreme Court decision.
A Warren spokesperson declined to say whether the senator thought there was merit to taking individual votes on aspects of reproductive rights ahead of the November midterm elections, but did say Warren “supports putting everyone on the record with votes and every Republican senator voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act.”
A Murray aide said the senator plans to lead Senate Democrats “in using the floor to continue making clear the stark difference between where Democrats stand and where Republicans stand on every woman’s right to control her own body, calling for unanimous consent on women’s health bills and delivering floor speeches about the devastating impact of the Dobbs decision.” The aide pointed out that Murray also has a health committee hearing planned for July 13 to highlight the effects of the Dobbs decision.
In interviews, aides and lawmakers involved in these discussions said thatrather than hold more formal votes, elected officials are leaning toward a Senate procedure known as “unanimous consent” or “UC.”
Unanimous consentmoves more quickly: Any senator can bring up a measurefor unanimous consent, and any other can block it. A Democratic lawmaker might introduce a billcodifying the right to birth control, for example,seeking unanimous consent. If just one Republican objects, then the legislation can’t move forward through this expedited process, and Democrats could theoretically then blame the whole party for the obstruction.
“Democrats could still credibly say it was Republicans who blocked the bill from moving forward,” said an aide familiar with the discussions.
“Democrats have a lot of bills and are interested in making that contrast between the parties clear, so UC offers an opportunity to highlight that week after week, and not let that momentum fall away,” explained another aide.
Still, some lawmakers and staffers say their caucus would be making a mistake in not holding more formal votes, especially on aspects that hold broad appeal among the American public. One downside with unanimous consent is that those tactics generally draw far less notice in the media, and they fail to put everyone on record.
“Has a [television] network ever cut to the floor during a UC?” said an aide who was critical of the strategy. “If we had a motion to proceed vote on a rape-incest-health bill, I guarantee CNN and MSNBC would put it on TV. That’s literally never happening with a UC, that gets dismissed in two seconds.”
These staffers point to disturbing examples mounting in the news of people denied abortion care in the wake of the Dobbs decision — including a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio. Voting on a rape and incest exception bill could theoretically divide the Republican caucus and underscore how out of step Republicans are with the public.
Plus, one staffer said, framing this as a tactical retreat is not how it was viewed when Democrats voted on narrower pieces of the Affordable Care Act: “We voted on different aspects, like preexisting conditions, the contraceptive piece, the donut hole, and no one ever thought that was harmful in talking about the most popular parts of the law and having those standalone votes.”
But several Democratic aides dismissed the idea that further votes were needed, stressing that Republican opposition to reproductive health care was already clearly demonstrated with the two failed Women’s Health Protection Act votes. Anything above that would be redundant, and could serve to highlight Democrats’ inability to get legislation passed.
“I don’t think anyone in America is confused on where things stand, and do people even pay attention to a bunch of show votes in Congress?”an aide asked. “I just don’t think there’s a huge, compelling case for it, though I don’t think we’re strongly opposed either.”
Smith, of Minnesota, offered something of a middle-ground position. “It’s clear where Republicans stand on reproductive freedom — they are opposed to it. And they’ve made that clear in their votes and in confirming justices committed to overturning Roe, so voters know, and I don’t think we need additional votes,” she told Vox.
Still, Smith acknowledged, there’s value to taking votes.
“I can’t speak for all of my colleagues in the caucus about how they will want to proceed and what we might do, but let me just say that votes in the Senate can help us demonstrate how out of step the Republicans are with what Americans want,” she said. “I don’t think those votes are needed for Americans to understand the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats. People, I think, understand that regardless, but I know we will continue to have conversations about what votes we want to have in order to put Republicans on the record again.”
Even bosses are joining the Great Resignation -
Christina Animashaun/Vox
New data shows a growing number of managers are quitting.
The so-called Great Resignation is going strong, and it’s not just for working stiffs anymore. Increasingly, managers are also leaving their jobs for greener pastures.
Data shows that managers are leaving their jobs at elevated levels, and that even though resignation rates for workers overall have declined from their peak, lots of people are still quitting their jobs. The breadth of quits could exacerbate an already tight labor market as quits in one area precipitate quits in another, and this cycle could ensure that the Great Resignation — also known as the Great Reshuffling or Great Reconsideration — won’t stop anytime soon.
Data on management departures comes from a number of sources. People analytics provider Visier found that resignation rates among managers went from 3.8 percent in the first half of 2021 to 5 percent in the first half of 2022, which represents a much bigger jump than for non-managers. Gusto, which provides payroll, benefits, and human resource management software, found quit rates among managers remained at the same peak level in June as they were last year, while those for non-managers have declined. LinkedIn found that the rate of people leaving their jobs at the director level has been growing much faster than at those at the entry level this year. The departure of bosses was also evident on job platform ZipRecruiter, which said job postings for managerial positions are growing at a faster rate than job listings at large, and currently make up 12 percent of job postings, up from 10 percent in June of last year.
To be clear, levels of quits remain high across job types and levels. Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week shows that 2.8 percent of employed people quit their jobs in May. That’s slightly lower than the peak of 3 percent last winter but still very high. In general, looking for a different job has become a bit of a national pastime. The number of people using top job search apps is at an all-time high, according to app marketing intelligence company Apptopia. Lower-paid workers always make up the majority of the workforce and a majority of the quits. As fallout from the pandemic as well as existing trends like an aging workforce continue, however,thecomposition of the resignations has shifted to include more tenured, higher-paid workers, and, increasingly, those in management roles.
“Resignation rates are creeping up and into ranks where it isn’t a foregone conclusion,” Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, who leads its Managing the Future of Work initiative, told Recode. “These are higher-paid workers who presumably have invested a lot in educational credentials, training or building their career at a company. They’re managers, and they’re leaving pretty good circumstances — that should be worrisome to companies.”
Their departures greatly affect the people who work for them and the companies they work for, both of which rely on managers to stabilize things in times of uncertainty. If managers are leaving, their companies’ CEOs will, at least for a while, have to make do without them.
“It’s like the military leaning on the non-commissioned junior officers,” Fuller said. “If all of a sudden the sergeants and generals quit, it doesn’t matter what the general’s big vision is for winning the war, someone has to be down there taking the beaches.”
But at a larger scale, high numbers of bosses quitting could usher even more quits among the rank-and-file workers as well as other managers, making the phenomena of the Great Resignation last even longer.
Why your boss is leaving
Bosses are people, too, and they’re subject to many of the same headwinds that are causing everyone else to quit their jobs, including burnout and the reconsideration of work’s place in their lives. But their reasons for leaving are also ones unique to management, which is tasked with the increasingly difficult task of hiring and retaining workers at a time when people are quitting left and right.
In a survey of managers, the leadership software maker Humu found that retention and hiring were their top two biggest challenges last year. People are continually leaving their jobs for things like better pay, remote work, and self-employment, and it’s management’s responsibility to replace them, which isn’t very easy in this tight labor market.
Managers are also trying to lead their workforce amid unprecedented change — something that’s adding to their strain, since they might not be equipped for it.
“A lot of managers get put into management, not because they’re great people managers but because they’re great technical contributors,” Humu cofounder Jessie Wisdom said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean you have the skills to manage emotions through difficult times and unprecedented levels of burnout and helping your team balance things that they’ve never had to balance.”
She added, “People are going through hard times and, as a manager, you have to help them through that. Part of your job is almost becoming being a therapist.”
A dispersed workforce is also creating new challenges for managers. The vast majority of big corporations are adopting a hybrid model, where employees work both from home and the office. Managing people across locations and trying to shepherd people back to the office who don’t want to go is proving to be a major difficulty for management.
The manager resignations are also a result of lots of opportunity — both professional and personal — elsewhere. A third of managers who quit in May did so for career advancement reasons, compared with just 19 percent in non-management positions, according to data from Gusto. The company also surveyed all types of workers on its platform and found that their No. 1 factor in accepting or declining a job offer is flexibility. Nearly half said that the ability to work from home some or all of the time would be a major or the most important factor in determining whether to accept a job offer in the future. Presumably people in management positions are more likely to have jobs where they can work from home, meaning they’re more likely to actually get that flexibility — either at their current or future job.
Importantly, management, especially executives, are higher paid and thus more financially secure than their charges, so they have more mobility to quit.
“The pressure and the demands on the C-suite continue to be pretty substantial,” Steve Hatfield, Global Future of Work Leader at Deloitte, said. “And the financial position that they’re in is one that would give them the opportunity to think about doing something different.”
It could also be a case of monkey see, monkey do. As more people in management positions quit, the idea of quitting becomes more apparent as an option for other managers.
What this means for the future of work
Data suggests that quits among management aren’t just a flash in the pan, and will likely continue for some time. Deloitte recently found that nearly 70 percent of the C-suite are seriously considering quitting for a job that better supports their well-being, compared with 57 for other employees. Research from Humu shows that the attrition risk for managers is two times higher than for non-managers — something that hadn’t been the case in years prior.
This could become a situation that feeds into itself.
When one manager quits, another is left picking up the slack, which could further frustrate them and potentially lead them to quit. This could cause their workers, left without adequate management that’s able to hire for unfilled positions, to leave as well, and that makes the remaining manager’s job even more difficult. Additionally, shortfalls could force companies to promote or hire people into those positions who aren’t qualified, further exacerbating the situation.
“There’s this difficulty we’re seeing in matching potential employees to roles that fit, and the managers are the ones who are primarily responsible for creating those matches,” Luke Pardue, an economist at Gusto, said. “So when they leave and the knowledge they have of the business and these roles disappears with them, we’ll likely see this struggle to find good matches continue and the number of vacancies increase.”
In other words, management quitting could make the Great Resignation worse.
It’s also not appealing to prospective job candidates not to know who their boss will be. As Fuller, the Harvard Business School professor, put it, “Would a baseball player sign with a team where you didn’t know who the manager was going to be?”
That uncertainty isn’t attractive to candidates with options. “For all I know, they’ll hire the biggest jerk on two legs,” Fuller said.
Of course, what an economic downturn means for all this is so far unclear. People, of course, don’t necessarily make life decisions based on a looming recession, but rather tend to act like the current situation is a predictor of the future.
What we do know is that managers are an important part of a company’s functioning, and they require a nuanced skill set like real-time judgment and people skills that can be tough to suss out on paper. And their ability to do so can have rippling effects on the company and employees alike.
At this point, the Great Resignation has built up so much momentum, it’s become a force unto itself. What’s not clear is how long it will take to meaningfully slow down.
From The Hindu: Sports
Gurugram win a huge achievement: Sahaja -
‘Just intrigued to see how long it lasts’: Steve Smith raises doubts over England’s attacking style - “If you come in on a wicket that's got some grass on it and Josh Hazlewood, Cummins and Starc are rolling in at you, is it going to be the same? I'm intrigued by it all… Is it going to work every time? I don't know.”
Ahead of Sourav Ganguly’s 50th birthday, Sachin Tendulkar recollects old memories - As BCCI president Sourav Ganguly turns 50 on Friday, his former opening partner Sachin Tendulkar shares insights into their friendship and how he foresaw Ganguly as captain of the Indian cricket team
Sindhu glides into Malaysia Masters quarterfinals - A tough contest against Tai Tzu Ying awaits for P.V. Sindhu, who comfortably won her second round clash in just 28 minutes `
Sania Mirza bids adieu to Wimbledon with semifinal loss in mixed doubles - Sania Mirza has already announced retirement after 2022 season
From The Hindu: National News
Central licence approval for Kerala’s KFON - Infrastructure Provider category 1 licence granted
Rajesh Srivastava takes charge as POWERGRID ED -
YSRCP plenary will consolidate party’s vote bank: MLAs - Local leaders, activists urged to attend the meeting
Hyderabad housing sales growth second highest in country: Report - Recent spike in property prices has had little impact on home buyers
Vivo remitted almost 50% of turnover to China to avoid getting taxed in India, says ED - ₹465 crore kept in 119 bank accounts linked to Vivo seized
From BBC: Europe
Genoa bridge: Hopes for new Italy as disaster trial opens - Families of the 43 people killed look for justice four years after a Genoa highway bridge collapsed.
Boris Johnson: World reacts as UK PM endgame unfolds - President Putin’s spokesman says “he doesn’t like us and we don’t like him either”.
Brittney Griner: Basketball star’s wife calls on US to secure her release - The US basketball star detained on drugs charges will not get justice in Russia, her wife says.
Ukraine war: 21,000 alleged war crimes being investigated, prosecutor says - Top prosecutor gives the new figure to the BBC, but admits many trials will be held in absentia.
Lithuania donates crowdfunded drone to Ukraine - The drone was originally crowdfunded, but the manufacturer decided to donate it without cost.
From Ars Technica
End-to-end encryption’s central role in modern self-defense - Encryption has never been more important for protection—and civil disobedience. - link
Why Lockdown mode from Apple is one of the coolest security ideas ever - Apple intros “extreme” optional protection against the scourge of mercenary spyware. - link
Florida once again has giant calamitous snails that spew parasitic brain worms - This is the third time the state has tried to eliminate the giant snails. - link
Looking to the future, Virgin Galactic purchases 2 more motherships - The company’s goal is to fly 400 revenue flights a year. - link
Orders for Apple’s new M2 MacBook Air begin July 8 - It will arrive at customers’ doorsteps and in retail stores on July 15. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
My son was just thrown out of school -
My son was thrown out of school today for letting a girl in his class give him a hand-job. I said “Son, that’s 3 schools this year! You’d better stop before you’re banned from teaching altogether.”
So he decided to get a facelift. He was so happy with the results that as soon as he left the building he asked the first person he saw.
“How old do you think I look?” “36” The man says “nah bruh I’m 55 thank you though”
He is standing in line at McDonald’s. He asked the cashier “How old do you think I look?”
The cashier says “You’re in your early 30s”.
He says “I’m 55 but I appreciate you”
Feeling good about himself. He’s standing at the bus stop and this little old lady. He asked the lady “how old do you think I am?”
She says “I am 85 years old and my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but when I was younger. I could reach down a man’s pants, feel around for a little and tell someone exactly how old they were.”
“No you can’t”
She says “yes I can”
He looks around and says “Go ahead”
The old lady sticks her hand is pants and moves it around for a bit. She pulls out her hand and say “you’re 55” “What the fuck” he says shockingly.
The old lady says “Nah I’m just messing with you. I was standing behind you at McDonald’s.”
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Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago
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Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
