Entering the summer, there was so much hope life would return to some semblance of normal after more than a year of emergency COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. Vaccination programs were fully under way. Government officials were lifting pandemic business restrictions. One could finally meet up with old friends without masks. But that was then and…
Read More »The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week reported that average hourly earnings increased 0.4 percent from November to December 2020. The increase stems from an increase of 0.8 percent in hourly earnings coupled with a 0.4 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Year over year, average hourly earnings increased 3.7 percent…
Read More »According to numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week, there were almost 900,000 job openings in the leisure and hospitality industry as of the end of August, a reduction of almost 100,000 from the same time last year. That said however, there was also other very good news on the average…
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Good old 2017 ended with a bang, with the Trump Administration making good on its promises to axe a controversial ruling that Dunkin’ and other franchise owners have argued undermines the very foundations of franchising. The National Labor Relations Board has dumped the Obama-era joint-employer rule, which had sowed confusion and stirred fears of unionization…
Read More »It was reported this week that Starbucks is acquiring an ownership stake in Italian bakery Princi, with 4 locations in Italy and one in central London. The company also made headlines this week when it announced that it was increasing wages across the board by 5% up to the manager level and adding further enhancements…
Read More »DDIFO Restaurant Analyst John Gordon had the opportunity to attend the recent conference and provides us with some of his observations, going beyond the headlines and the spin from earnings calls. Overall, restaurant market share has been stagnant for years, but: Restaurant sales are flat-to-up marginally but traffic is still down from the 2007 pre-recession…
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While you’ve been busy running your franchise and serving your customers, legislators, lawyers and union activists have busy doing what they do best—agitating non-issues into confrontations, passing new laws, formulating new regulations and filing new lawsuits. And, more often than not, these new rules and regulations are threatening to change how franchise owners run their…
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According to human resource and employee relations firms, the President’s Executive Order signed last week could increase the overtime threshold to as much as $52,000 per year – meaning that anyone not guaranteed that much in their salary would be entitled to overtime pay. In one of its client alerts, HR Consultant Sesco Management, advised…
Read More »LawyersandSettlements.com reports that theUS Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis plans to be more aggressive in enforcing federal employment laws such as the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and has asked for additional funding to hire hundreds of new compliance officers for the Department of Labor (DOL)’s Wage and Hour Division, which covers overtime issues. This would increase the size of the Division by a third.
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