The New Year is upon us and it’s a good time to think about the unimaginable things we do for the sake of money today.

One great example is a large corporation fighting an increase in the wage of miserably paid tomato pickers. Folks, $13,000 a year can hardly sustain an individual’s bare bones life. Come on, we all know this. You don’t need a fancy degree to figure this out.

I’m talking about the plight of tomato pickers in Florida. Pickers who supply McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell with all those tasteless tomatoes we scraf down in our fast food.

The farm-workers group, called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Immokalee for the town where they do the picking, has pushed and won wage increases for workers who supply McDonald’s and Taco Bell, but Burger King is the last hold out.

Burger King has found an interesting argument to support its refusal to pay more. It claims it can’t pony up any more money because the company doesn’t directly employee the workers.

What Burger King would have to do is pressure the third party that supplies them with tomatoes to up the wages. It’s not something that’s unheard of. Companies pressure suppliers to drop prices all the time, why not push them to up prices a bit so they can pass on that money to the poor workers?

Another interesting twist to the whole situation is the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, which represents 90 percent of growers in the state, is threatening to fine the growers who are cooperating with McDonald’s and Taco Bell and actually paying their pickers a fair wage.

The Exchange’s executive vice president Reggie Brown says the coalition of farm workers have violated antitrust laws by working with McDonald’s and Taco Bell’s parent Yum Brands to boost wages.

Usually such antitrust laws are trotted out when companies are colluding to fix prices on certain products or services. It’s seen as unfair to competition if such entities are allowed to compare notes on how much they plan to charge, because then the consumer ends up paying more.

But, in this case, it seems probable that McDonald’s and Taco Bell would end up eating the extra penny per pound added on behalf of the workers. What would that translate anyway for one Whopper? Could consumers pay the difference?

The situation even prompted former President Jimmy Carter to send a letter to Reggie Brown of the Exchange:

“Growers, consumers, and workers must be active participants in establishing a fair wage and good conditions. Companies such as Yum and McDonald’s are taking important leadership roles toward that goal. Burger King and others are continuing to support a market system that keeps workers in sub-poverty conditions and stand silently as modest gains are deliberately rolled back. It is time to take a fresh look at the problem in order to restore the dignity of the Florida tomato industry.”

It blows my mind that these companies are fighting tooth and nail for one penny. We need to get things in perspective everyone. How can we justify our nation and want to protect what we’re all about, if we can’t even pay workers a fair wage.

The American Dream: A house, a car, a good education, and a hamburger with tomatoes that were picked by workers who make a decent wage.

What if the government stepped in and said, “ok, all you corporations out there. If you don’t add women to your board rooms pronto we will shut you down?”

Sounds extreme?

Well, that’s just what happened in Norway.

Two years ago, the government told company big wigs, mostly men, they had to install women on their boards or else. This from the Guardian:

The 500 companies listed on Norway’s stock exchange face being shut down unless they install women on their boards over the next two years in a radical initiative imposed by a government determined to help women break through the “glass ceiling”.

Norwegian companies face a two-year deadline to ensure that women hold 40% of the seats of each company listed on the Oslo bourse. New companies have to comply now with the rules and the government is considering extending the law to family-owned companies as well.

The requirement came into effect at the start of this year after companies were given two years to embrace the demands voluntarily following the passing of the law in 2003. State-owned companies are already obliged to comply and now have 45% female representation on their boards.

It seems the government’s mandated board quotas have translated into strides for women, albeit forced strides. The companies that have not complied have until Monday to pretty up their boards. Again from the Guadian:

Almost a quarter of Norway’s companies have failed to comply with a controversial law requiring them to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 40%, according to government figures. If they do not promote more women, they could be shut down.

Norway’s 487 public limited companies, including 175 firms listed on the Oslo stock exchange, have until the end of the year on Monday to implement a 2003 act that requires firms to boost the number of female directors.

The law, which introduced quotas, has been effective in raising the number of women board members at listed companies from 6% in 2001 to 37%.

Norway now boasts the highest proportion of women on boards in the world. Sweden comes second with 19%; the US has around 15%. In the UK, only 11% of directors were female in 2007.

The U.S. still has a long way to go. Maybe corporations here need some sort of swift kick in their collective asses. What do you all think? Can it happen without the big hand of Big Brother, or Big Sister?

I got a ride the other day on a shuttle van service and the driver asked me what I do.

I told him I write about careers and labor issues, and you are not going to believe what he asked me next:

“Why do you think blacks don’t have career ambitions?”

OK, I sat there with my mouth opened sort of in shock. I said, “what did you say?”

He actually repeated it.

I said, “what are you talking about. I know tons of blacks that indeed have career ambitions.”

The odd thing was we had just dropped off two African American passengers at large corporations in the town where I live. They were both going off to work.

I pointed this out to this guy who didn’t see the irony in chauffeuring around two seemingly ambitious blacks who were probably making way more than him an hour.

You could tell he realized he was pissing me off and started to back away from his statement. He said,”I was talking about the guys who hang on the corner.”

I can’t say I’m totally surprised that attitudes like this still exist. It’s part of our lives and definitely an undercurrent in the work world. Minorities still make up a tiny percentage of the high level positions in Corporate America. And I often get letters from readers wondering if they’ve been the object of discrimination.

Here are some numbers on the economic realities from the Urban League:

In terms of annual median income, black men earned less than three-quarters of what white
men earned ($34,443 vs. $46,807), roughly a $12,000 gap. Black women made 87 percent of
what white women made and $5,000 less than black men ($29,588 a year).

The driver of the shuttle was an older man, in his sixties. I had lunch with some friends today and one wondered if it wasn’t just a generational bias, one that they grew up thinking was the way of the world.

I’m not sure. But I am sure we still have a long way to go.

It appears the striking Hollywood writers are breaking ranks and looking to negotiate individual deals with individual production houses. Will that work for the striking workers? It’s too early to tell.

But it’s never a good idea to step away from a bigger bargaining unit in order to save your own job. There is, after all, strength in numbers.

This past weekend, striking writers who work on David Letterman’s show said they were willing to negotiate with the late night talk show host’s production company.

And today, as if emboldened by the move, Associated Press reported that other late night talk shows think they can do a show without writers:

“Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien’s late-night shows will return to the air with fresh episodes on January 2 after two months of repeats due to the writers’ strike, the network said Monday.The “Tonight” show and “Late Night” will return without writers supplying jokes. NBC said the decision was similar to 1988, when Johnny Carson brought back the “Tonight” show two months into a writers’ strike.”

There is nothing harder than being on strike and losing your paycheck. It hurts more than anyone can imagine. But there is something to be said about standing firm and keeping the ranks together. How else can workers get what they want? It’s all about power folks…and who will blink first.

Will it be production studio executives or the Hollywood writers?

There are a lot of pressures this time of year. We end up spending more than we want. If we hate our jobs, we feel even worse about having finished yet another year in the same place. And there’s more holiday hell than holiday cheer when you go out into the throngs of shoppers.

So imagine how tough it must be on people who suffer from clinical mental illnesses, not just the holiday blues.

I address this issue in my column today on MSNBC.com.

I got an earful from the head of a depression organization that we reporters couldn’t care less about depression, as we rush every year to write holiday-themed stories.

There’s typically an avalanche of holiday blues stories, but this time I figured I would deal with real depression. There is so much more to this illness than I cover in my column. But I hope I do it justice.
Like any other illness it can impact a person’s day to day life, especially worklife.

Certain jobs just disappear over time, and still others resurface.

That’s the case with the milkman. I just did a story for the New York Times on the return of the milkman. Yes, the milkman. The guy that used to drop glass bottles of milk outside your front door.

Well, today it might be more the milkperson, since a few women are getting into the act.

The hours aren’t bad. Early in the morning before the world starts getting into full drive. You could go to school during the day, or hold another job.

Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, likes to slap people around, metaphorically speaking.

Welch was the keynote speaker at the Massachusetts Conference for Women. (I know an odd choice to have a man as the headline act, but he did have his wife there.)

The women in the audience really responded to Welch, and I think many of them felt motivated by him.

“If you want to get ahead, it isn’t about saying ‘hi’ to your boss, it’s about over-delivering,” he says. “That is the game. When you learn that game that will do more for you than anything else you can do.”

It’s about going above and beyond what you’re asked to do. That’s how Welch sees it, and I suppose his ideas worked because GE’s growth exploded under his direction.

When asked about work life balance — Welch scoffed.

“This is about work life choices, not balance. Get rid of that word. You will make choices and the balance will change at any point in time. It is a choice that people make.”

Coming from a successful, charismatic man like Welch these words were easily digested by the women in the audience. (He could make paint drying seem interesting.) He was pretty much blowing out of the water all this bull about work life balance.

There’s been this growing tide among women that we can climb the ladder of success with flexible, or scaled-back schedules at work so we have time to make cookies for our kid’s kindergarten class. But that’s just not the way it typically works in the business world.

Welsh conveyed that pretty succinctly.

It’s all about the bottom line stupid.

Your employer will let you telecommute, job share, have flexible hours if you can still “over-deliver”.

All of you have to figure out if that’s indeed possible.

“If you can deliver in four hours because you’re so damn smart and efficient then god bless you,” Welch bellowed.

It’s so strange how things happen.

I plan on discussing mentoring in my speech during the Massachusetts Conference for Women today. And last week I had an incredible thing happen to me that has to do with the topic…something that lends credence to the idea that we all touch people in our lives whether we know it or not.

When I was in my early twenties I rented an apartment on a busy street in Astoria, Queens, from a sweet Italian woman named Maria Rosa Mulone who gave me the apartment for $150 less than it was listed for because I couldn’t really afford it. She was like my mom away from home, fixing me incredible Italian meals and looking after me.

She had a young daughter named Rosella who would often knock on my door and visit. I shared my love of painting with her, and gave her some art supplies.

Well, recently I wrote a story for MSNBC.com about my doomed quest to boycott China and I got over 300 emails from readers. I read many of them but was too busy to look at them all.

A few days after my story came out I went back to read through the emails and I came across this one:

“I signed on this afternoon and saw your article about boycotting China. When I saw your name I knew I recognized it immediately. I believe you rented an apartment in Astoria from my mom many years ago on Astoria Blvd. I don’t know if you remember me my name is Rosella. I also remember you gave me my first canvas pad to draw on and that took me on a path that I have continued on even today. I decided to major in art in college and pursued an art degree for my masters.”

OK, I have to admit, I cried when I read Rosella’s email.

You go through life wondering if anything you do has meaning, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find out that indeed you had tiny impact on someone.

I quickly sent an email to Rosella telling her I remembered her and her mom very well, and that her email to me made my week, month, year.

I decided to look up her name and see if any of her art was online. I came across a website for Rosella Mulone. (www.rosellamulone.com.)

As the website came up on my screen, I must admit I was hoping I actually liked her artwork. I mean, even if I didn’t it wouldn’t matter, but it would be nice to love it.
And I did. It is incredible.

I sent an email to Rosella, asking how her mom was and sharing with her how much her mother’s nurturing and kindness helped me at that point in my life.

Her response:

“Sadly, my mother passed away five years ago from colon cancer. I actually quit my job as a graphic designer in an auction house to take care of her the last year she was sick and I decided to finish my master’s degree in visual arts and then started family.”

Life is full of unexpected connections. You just don’t know what you mean in the scheme of things. But somehow, we are all connected.

I think the key is reaching out for help from people that you can learn from, and on the flip side, always reach out to help the people around you. Who knows what it will mean.

This is from her final email to me:

“Funny how someone leaves an imprint of themselves behind and it can remain for a long time.”

There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday about how many executive women aren’t scrambling to get on the Hillary Clinton presidential bandwagon. You could see this in many different ways.

First off, it could be a sign that women have so overcome prejudice in the workplace that they have no inclination to help other women because those women don’t really need their help.

Or, you could view it as a bunch of women who are so oppressed by the male-dominated society that they don’t even respect members of their own gender.

Or, you could see this as some sort of corporate conspiracy, where the titans of business, mainly men, are actually keeping their thumbs on women in power, possibly threatening to dethrone them if they allow, or aide a women to get the biggest head-honcho position in our nation.

Or maybe they are Republicans and can’t get behind a Democrat.

Or, it could just be that they don’t like Hillary much.

Hmmm.

No matter what the reason, I think it’s interesting that the biggest business newspaper in the country did this blow out piece on how high-powered women aren’t, for the most part, supporting a woman.

That’s the premise in a nutshell. Well, they do include photos of women that are supporting Hillary’s run…unlikely bedfellows like Billie Jean King and Diane von Furstenberg.

But Hillary’s attempts to get a boat load of women business leaders on board, the article says, is turning out to be a tougher battle than one might expect.

Why would one expect it to be an easy battle?

Well, you would think that after centuries of male rule in the United States, women would be falling all over themselves to finally have one of their own running the show.

That’s what surprises many. That, in fact, it’s not that easy.

This didn’t shock me because I often hear from women in the workplace that they don’t really respect other women in the workplace, especially when those women are their bosses. I’ve also had high-level women tell me they resented having to help other women moving up through the ranks because no one gave them a hand when they were clawing their way up the ladder. (This isn’t true of all the women I’ve interviewed but many do hold this opinion.)

MSNBC did a great a poll along with Elle magazine a while back, and indeed, the results were disturbing. This is an excerpt of a story I did on the study:

While Clinton hopes to smash through the ultimate glass ceiling to become the nation’s first female president, the Work & Power Survey conducted by Elle and MSNBC.com suggests that stereotypes about sex and leadership are alive and well.

While more than half our 60,000 respondents said a person’s sex makes no difference to leadership abilities, most who expressed a preference said men are more likely to be effective leaders.

Of male respondents, 41 percent said men are more likely to be good leaders, and 33 percent of women agreed. And three out of four women who expressed a preference said they would rather work for a man than a woman.

The survey, conducted early this year, found a bonanza of stereotypes among those polled, with many using the optional comment section to label women “moody,” “bitchy,” “gossipy” and “emotional.” The most popular term for woman, used 347 times, was “catty.”

The results were unsettling. But I’m hopeful women and men can see beyond their preconceived notions. The main point is choosing the best leader, in the workplace and in the political world. Right?

So this striking worker walks into a bar with a midget, a priest, a rabbi and an imam.

I dare not finish that joke on my own. Sorry, my comedy writers are on strike.

Just kidding. I don’t have any writers under me. The stuff you read is all CareerDiva.

But if I did have a staff that helped me make all this wonderment happen you better believe I would treat them right if they went on strike.

That’s what’s happening right now in Hollywood.

There are few cases in labor history where white knights come in and pay the wages of workers indirectly impacted by a strike.

That’s just what’s happening in the world of TV comedy. The Hollywood writers strikes that has dragged on for weeks hasn’t been horrible for some late night show staffs because fat cats like Jay Leno and David Letterman have been paying non-writing staff wages. Yes, the money is coming right out of these comedians’ pockets.

Ok, I know, they have more money than god, but it’s still a nice gesture.

But it got me wondering if this gesture actually undermines the strike.
I don’t know. It’s a nice thing, albeit strange.