Employers

How would you like to get a huge discount on all your out-of-pocket health-related spending, including doctor co-payments, eyeglasses, aspirin, hearing aids, birth control, braces and smoking-cessation products? You can get the discount - in the form of tax-free spending - if you have a flexible spending account through your employer. If you don't use one, you could be wasting hundreds of dollars a year. Though FSAs have formally been around since the 1970s, they are a seldom-used employee benefit.

Retirement savings plans at schools, hospitals and other nonprofits are about to undergo their biggest overhaul since Lyndon Johnson was president. It's about time. For far too long, many 403(b)s have operated with little or no employer oversight. Workers can be confronted with hundreds of investment options, a daunting prospect for even sophisticated investors. And it isn't unusual for many of their choices to be high-fee mutual funds and annuities. The overhaul is coming from the Internal Revenue Service, which first proposed changes more than two years ago. The IRS says it will soon release final regulations, which could take effect as early as January.

Just days before starting a new job as a receptionist, Kimberly Sudhoff took a telephone call from a hiring manager who asked for her uniform size. Because she was four months' pregnant, Sudhoff said she wasn't sure about her size. A few days later, she said, the manager rescinded the employment offer and questioned Sudhoff's commitment to the job. Sudhoff said she was encouraged to reapply after having the baby. "It's really terrible to say, but you can't help to think if I wasn't pregnant, I would have gotten the job," recalled Sudhoff, 27, who lived in Hagerstown at the time and has since moved to Mississippi.

A deeply divided Supreme Court ruling sharply limits the ability of workers to sue employers for gender pay discrimination linked to actions taken years earlier. Employer groups praised yesterday's 5-4 decision, saying it protects employers from unfair liability and requires workers to act promptly to protect their rights. Civil rights advocates criticized the ruling, saying it will prevent workers who are discriminated against from recovering all the money they are due from employers.

Every weekday morning, Fran McDonough gets up and commutes to her job at Bell Atlantic -- walking through the kitchen, down the stairs and into the basement where she turns on her computer."

WASHINGTON -- After finding that workers who complain of health and safety hazards are often dismissed from their jobs, the Clinton administration will soon propose sweeping new protections for such whistle-blowers, federal officials say.The law that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration prohibits employers from retaliating against people who report unsafe or unhealtful working conditions.But the inspector general of the Labor Department, Charles Masten, said such reprisals often occur, and Charles Jeffress, the assistant secretary of labor in charge of OSHA, said the Clinton administration would soon recommend changes in the law to increase the protection of workers who expose health and safety hazards.

LOS ANGELES -- About 1,200 union activists will converge in Los Angeles today for a national AFL-CIO convention that highlights the movement's reborn zeal to organize workers. Despite all the hoopla, participants don't need to look far beyond downtown's Convention Center for sobering reminders of what they're up against.There is, for example, Pedro Ramirez, a machine operator in nearby La Puente who said he was harassed, punished with dangerous assignments and forced out of his $6.75-an-hour job after signing a union authorization card.

The idea of helping someone get to work sounds simple, but it's not.Not when the jobs are in labor-starved Howard County and the workers are in job-starved West Baltimore's empowerment zone. That's why a coalition of leaders from county, city, state and regional government agencies met with several dozen Howard employers at a Dorsey hotel yesterday.They're expecting to get $650,000 in federal and local grant money to begin by July to bring workers from older city neighborhoods to fill evening- and night-shift jobs in booming Howard County, where hourly wages of up to $11 are going begging.

Richard McGee finds work for people, and for most of his company's 55 years, that work was in Baltimore.The '90s could have meant a reversal of fortune for him as better jobs took firm root in the suburbs, far away from bus or train stops. Unemployed city residents without cars had no way to get to them.But McGee made a radical and costly decision: He would provide the rides. Today his South Baltimore employment agency spends $14,000 a week shuttling about 350 workers to and from jobs in buses and vans every day. In cities across the country, it is an idea that is bridging serious transit gaps.

The idea of helping someone get to work sounds simple, but it's not.Not when the jobs are in labor-starved Howard County and the workers are in job-starved West Baltimore's empowerment zone.That's why a coalition of leaders from county, city, state and regional government agencies met with several dozen Howard employers at a Dorsey hotel yesterday.They're expecting to get $650,000 in federal and local grant money to begin by July to bring workers from older city neighborhoods to fill evening- and night-shift jobs in booming Howard County, where hourly wages of up to $11 are going begging.

An employment fair for seniors in Baltimore County on Thursday drew several hundred job seekers, many of them recently laid off after years with the same company. Most were in their 50s and early 60s, too young for Social Security benefits and still critically in need of work. "I absolutely am looking for a job," said Kathy Metcalf of Catonsville, a human resources worker who was laid off a year ago after 24 years on the job. "I may be an aging baby boomer, but I still have a son in college."

If you haven't gotten your open enrollment packet yet, brace yourself for higher premiums and deductibles, fewer choices and more pressure from your employer to eat your vegetables. Companies facing another year of rising health costs are shifting more of the burden onto workers while at the same time prodding us to lead healthier lifestyles to keep expenses from escalating in the future. Preliminary results of an annual survey by Mercer, a major benefits consultant, found that small to large employers estimate health insurance costs will go up nearly 9 percent next year.

WASHINGTON - - The surge in the nation's unemployment rate last month to a 26-year high underscored that the weak labor market remains a menacing threat to the economic recovery. Employers dropped another 216,000 nonfarm jobs in August, pushing up the unemployment rate to 9.7% from 9.4% in July, the Labor Department reported Friday. The latest losses were smaller than the 276,000 jobs eliminated in July and a third of the monthly cuts in the first quarter, a trend that apparently encouraged investors and sparked a rally on Wall Street.

The U.S. is investing money and hope in an attempt to build a work force that can successfully compete for good jobs in a global economy. High schools and community colleges are undertaking career-oriented reforms, while the federal Workforce Investment Act is funding expanded programs for young people and for workers dislocated by economic change. It sounds good, but unfortunately, much of the money and hope will be wasted - unless current myths are replaced with facts and common sense.

For workers who have seen cuts in pay and benefits during the past year, there is some good news on the horizon. More employers plan to reverse salary cuts and reinstate benefits within the next six months, according to a new survey by consultant Watson Wyatt. Based on responses from 175 large employers, 33 percent of them said they plan to unfreeze salaries, up from 17 percent two months ago. When it comes to rolling back pay cuts, 44 percent plan to do so, compared with 30 percent two months ago. And 24 percent of employers plan to restore 401(k)

Maryland's unemployment rate rose to 7.3 percent last month - the worst it's been in a generation - as the national recession continued to eat away at the state's job base. Employers cut 1,100 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. The numbers, which are preliminary estimates, are adjusted to try to account for seasonal variations in hiring and layoffs. The jobless rate increased from 7.2 percent in May. It's better than the national picture, with 9.5 percent of the labor force out of work.

Don't necessarily bet on a corporate employer if you're a new grad or other job seeker. Nearly all the Maryland sectors adding more jobs than they're shedding are financed by the taxpayer, according to new government figures. Private Maryland companies ditched 78,000 jobs during the 12 months ending in April while state, local and federal government added 7,000, says the U.S. Labor Department. That's the worst showing for both sectors in more than a decade, but at least government is hiring.

In normal times, self-interest keeps society working and increases the wealth of nations. Corporations earn profits but also supply needed products. Consumers furnish their nests but also create jobs. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest," wrote Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, who figured this out two centuries ago. These are not normal times. As shoppers threaten to go on strike, as bankers shrink from lending, as investors flee the markets, behavior that makes sense for one family or one company is proving poisonous for us all. This includes you, employers.

Your bosses aren't serving you chicken soup just yet, but during this open enrollment season you'll find they're taking other creative steps to make sure you don't get sick. They might bribe you with gift cards or cash so you fill out a questionnaire to assess your health risks. They might pick up the full cost of certain prescription drugs to make sure you stay on them. Some large employers are even adding on-site medical clinics to make it easy for workers to visit a doctor or fill a prescription.

Amid uncertainty over the reeling economy, workers want answers - or at least some information - from higher-ups about how the financial turmoil could affect them. That kind of feedback goes a long way to help relieve anxiety and avoid the rumor mill, workplace experts say. "As a general rule, most managers will be well-served to share information," says Robert Trumble, professor of management at Virginia Commonwealth University's business school and director of the Virginia Labor Studies Center.