The unemployment extension for the long-term jobless expires today. If an extension isn’t passed it will be a gloomy holiday season for millions of people who have been unable to find jobs in this economy.

Democrats are making last ditch efforts to get an extension, but it’s unclear if they’ll be able to do it.

Some politicians want to make sure such an extension is paid for and does not add to the deficit. That would be great, if it were possible. I wonder where these fiscal conservatives were when the government bailed out Wall Street and put it on the taxpayers’ tab.

Why is it so easy to stiff the regular working stiff?

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey did not sound hopeful today during a press briefing with media. He said a vote on the extension was going to take place after 4 pm and the only way for it to be defeated was if someone stands up and objects. Will Republicans stand up? (more…)

Given the big turnout on Black Friday, Cyber Monday is expected to be a shopping bonanza. But unlike Friday’s buying frenzy, most of you shopping today are shopping at work during work time and maybe even on a work computer.

Should you be doing this or not?

Alas, the answer isn’t that easy.

The lines between work and personal lives have blurred thanks to technological advances such as texting and e-mail, giving workers the ability to work anywhere and any time. And during a grueling recession many workers are working harder and longer. So, when do you have time to shop or do any other personal stuff? Work time of course. (more…)

When I signed up to be a chaperon for my daughter’s fifth grade field trip this past Monday, I assumed I was volunteering a couple of hours of my time.

The week before the trip, I finally sat down and read the field trip slip my daughter had me sign when I was distracted doing work in my home office. The trip was to Gettysburg, PA, about two and a half hours away; and the return time was 7 pm. Yikes!

“Would the bus have WiFi?” I thought to myself. I can bring my laptop and do any work that needed done given the short Thanksgiving week. Another student’s mom I spoke with thought not, but she was hoping there were outlets on the bus so she could plug in her phone and stay connected to work.

I could do that too. I was finally able to convince myself that my career would not come to an end because of a field trip. But around this time, I got an email from an editor saying PBS’s Need To Know website was planning on running an oped I had written about airport security workers and would probably contact me on Monday to edit the piece.

Are you kidding me? I was going to be on a bus with 30 kids heading to a Civil War battlefield on a bus that maybe had an outlet if I was lucky. (more…)

Remember Velma Hart, the woman who got up in front of President Obama during a forum earlier this year and told him she was “exhausted” and sick of defending his economic policies? She and her husband were worried about their financial futures, and she wondered if there was any hope.

Well, she lost her job.

The middle-aged Hart was the chief financial officer for AmVets, a non-profit veterans service organization, and found out last last week that she was yet another layoff casualty in this economy.

Unfortunately, her situation is not unique, and making matters worse for Hart as she goes back out into the job market is her age. Sorry folks, it’s just a harsh reality. (more…)

I’ve been monitoring the Black Friday deals for a few weeks now as part of a new “Deal of the Day” section I’m writing for MSNBC.com and TodayShow.com, and I fear I may be contributing to what is expected to be holiday shopping hysteria later this week.

Already the airwaves, newspapers, and the Internet are bursting with endless, “never-before-seen” bargains. And whether these bargains turn out to be real or not, consumers can’t help but be caught up in the pre-Black Friday marketing push. I’ve talked to many deal-hunting hotshots in the past week, and they’re getting their game faces and cleats on for the big day.

In 2008, I wrote about a 34-year old Wal-Mart temp worker at a Long Island store named Jdimytai Damour who had hardly any training in dealing with crowds and was crushed to death by shoppers when the doors opened on Black Friday. His father Ogera Charles told me a year after his death that “there were too many people.” Of Walmart and the shoppers, he said, “they both could have done a better job.”

Turns out, retailers and consumers apparently aren’t doing a better job, because worker injuries during special sales events have actually increased in recent years.

Many workers are hopeful things won’t be as crazy, but they’re preparing for the worst. A worker at Sears told me yesterday she’s been asked to come into work at 3:45 am this Friday; and when I asked her how she felt about working she had a bit of fear in her eyes. “It will be okay,” she said, unconvincingly.

That’s why I decided to do a blog post to warn workers of the danger ahead. I’m not being an alarmist folks. Even the government is worried about worker safety amidst the buying bonanza expected this Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, and is warning retailers that if they don’t take precautionary measure to protect workers they are going to be in big trouble. (more…)

It’s no surprise a pay equity bill got voted down today. Women wanting equal pay is now seen as just an obsession, like needing a new pair of stilettos.

A Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday bashed the Paycheck Fairness Act that could not overcome a Republic filibuster today, calling the drive to ensure equal pay for equal work an “obsession” and not grounded in reality. Women don’t make less because of discrimination, the author contends. It’s all about the choices we gals make – you know, asking for flexible hours or taking time off to birth babies. The author didn’t mention the fact that more than 60 percent of women in the workplace are not even parents.

Clearly, quite a few senators, including two prominent female politicians, Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME), also thought the movement for pay equity is just the latest female fetish and shouldn’t be taken seriously, voting against the bill 58-41. The bill had already passed in the House.

The Act, which was introduced in January 2009 by then Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) to amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963, would have given enforcement teeth to existing laws that have done little to shrink the pay gap between men and women, which the Department of Labor says is 23 cents on the dollar. (more…)

The only real good worker news recently has come out of Google. The company announced it was giving its entire global workforce of 23,000 a 10 percent pay raise starting in January.

Even though the search engine giant has had some layoffs during the recession, they are nothing like other large companies, and Google’s been hiring consistently through the bad times.

Clearly, lots of folks want to work for Google and companies like them. But how do you get on the Google job track?

With so many college kids graduating and finding no work, it makes sense for high school students and their parents, who are now scouting colleges, to wonder whether the school they pick will lead to a solid job for a solid employer.

But how do you find out whether the school you’re in is more likely to be a recruiting favorite of companies like Google? Social networking sites! There’s a wealth of information on these sites, particularly LinkedIn, that can shed light on this and I’m going to show you how to find it. (more…)

Most of us will never know what it feels like to see our unemployment insurance benefits run out. But that doesn’t mean we can’t feel for the people who are at the economic edge, just eking by because of that check for a few hundred dollars.

Aimee Brittain, 32, is coming up on a year without a job in January and she’s at that edge. She’s never seen a job market like this in her life time. “I’ve been working continuously since I was 15 when I was bagging for a grocery store,” she noted. The hardest thing to accept, she said, was not being able to find a job despite sending out tons of resumes and applying to eight temporary staffing agencies.

“I was making $38,000,” she said about the property administrative assistant job she lost. The unemployment benefits she gets for the whole month is equal to just one of the paychecks she got when she was employed. But that check helps this single mother just make it; probably because she’s quite frugal. She’s known as The Coupon Diva online.

While she’s somehow making ends meet, if she doesn’t get an extension on her unemployment benefits at the end of the year, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Millions of hard-working Americans like Brittain will soon be seeing their jobless benefits run out, but should we, as a caring society, let this happen? One poll released this week reveals what many Americans think. (more…)

We’re always telling young adults to be careful what they do and say, especially in this digital age. But, for good reason, they may not believe us.

Mikala Jamison, a former intern of mine and a great writer, offers her take on why watching what you say may not be a good career move after all.

What are we teaching the next generation? Not great stuff, it turns out.

By Mikala Jamison

Believe it or not, saying or doing dumb things can sometimes be a good career move.

Take Karen Owen, the Duke alumna who recently made news because of her “sex thesis”—the 48-page PowerPoint presentation she emailed as a joke to three friends. It detailed (penis size, dirty talk, sexual technique, everything) her sexual exploits with 13 Duke males. (more…)

Employers can’t use heredity against you.

It’s bad enough that employers sometimes discriminate against people because of their gender, race, religion or disability. Suddenly, thanks to genetics and genetic testing, we all had to worry about being the victims of bias because of what could be future illnesses and disabilities.

Let’s say your boss hears you talking about your sister’s breast cancer, and figures there’s a chance you may get it some day and end up costing the company big health care bucks.

What if that boss fired or demoted you as a result? Is this legal?

“No way,” according to long-awaited new rules published this week by the federal government. (more…)