work

Connecticut’s hourly minimum wage increased by a dollar Tuesday to $12 amid a COVID-19 pandemic that has reinforced both the value of low-wage workers and the fragility of the businesses that often rely on them.

When your home becomes your new office, it can be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life. This hour, we continue our series on The Future of Work by discussing the benefits, and drawbacks of working from home full time. 

Many Connecticut residents are used to spending a lot of time commuting, whether driving on a highway, riding on a train to the city or taking the bus across town. But the number of drivers and ridership across all modes of transportation have dropped dramatically with stay-at-home orders and the closing of non-essential businesses.

When your home becomes your new office, it can be hard to set boundaries between work and personal life. This hour, we continue our series on The Future of Work by discussing the benefits, and drawbacks, of working from home full time. 

Essential workers provide much needed services to the general public but at what cost to their physical and mental health?

This hour, we continue our series on The Future of Work by talking to people who never stopped going to their jobs.  

This is the first part in a series of shows from Where We Live about the future of work after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many Connecticut residents are used to spending a lot of time commuting, whether driving on a highway, riding on a train to the city or taking the bus across town. But the number of drivers and ridership across all modes of transportation have dropped dramatically with stay-at-home orders and the closing of non-essential businesses.

This hour, with Connecticut beginning to reopen, what will the “new commute” look like?

Where We Live hosts a series of conversations about the future of the work during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. From the daily commute to the role of essential workers, we talk about how the workplace has been fundamentally changed by the pandemic. Listen to recent episodes and check back for more:

Connecticut will pay tens of millions of dollars of backlogged unemployment insurance benefits in the next two weeks after crafting emergency upgrades to its nearly 40-year-old computer system, eliminating a major obstacle to mitigating the economic hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, state labor officials said Wednesday.

What’s it like being a dad in 2020? On the next Where We Live, we’ll talk about social expectations for fathers as caregivers, and the impact an involved father has on the entire family, emotionally and financially. Are you a father? We want to hear from you.

With one in four workers now aged 55 and older, Connecticut lawmakers of both parties are rallying around a relatively modest bill aimed at age-discrimination: a prohibition on employers requiring prospective employees to list their age, birth date, or graduation year on an application.

States that allow residents to carry a concealed firearm generally see more workplace homicides committed with guns, according to a new study from Eastern Connecticut State University.

Researchers analyzed 25 states that adopted the legislation between 1992 and 2017, and those states saw an average increase of 24% in the rates of workplace homicides committed with a firearm after the laws took effect. 

Gov. Ned Lamont engaged in two of his favorite pastimes Tuesday: Drawing boldface corporate CEOs, academics and philanthropists into public-private partnerships, and tilting at the silos he believes prevent government agencies from working efficiently in common cause.

Predictions of a paperless future go back to the 1800s. Yet, despite a dizzying array of technological alternatives to paper, those prediction have not come true.

Hearst Connecticut Media has published a series of reports on data that shows workplace sexual harassment and abuse remain a serious problem across all industries in the state.

Gov. Ned Lamont has asked legislative leaders to return in special session to vote on a revised version of a restaurant tip-credit bill he vetoed in July, suggesting that talks with unions, business owners and other stakeholders have produced the framework of a consensus.

Lamont, who vetoed a bill that would have stripped restaurant workers of the right to pursue claims of unpaid wages in certain circumstances, is proposing instead to limit damages they could collect from restaurants that relied on inaccurate advice from the Department of Labor in calculating tip-credit wages.

Gov. Ned Lamont is out of the office.

“He’s been gone since Friday,” Max Reiss, his spokesman, said on Sunday. “His family takes a summer trip to Maine. Some years it’s been as long as a month that they go up there. This year he’s taking two weeks.”

This hour, we take a deep dive into the realities of modern-day motherhood. We talk with a sociologist who spent years in the field interviewing working moms. We also get a local perspective, and we want to hear from you. 

The idea of what a college education should be has changed over the years. This hour: what’s the value of a liberal arts degree in the twenty-first century?

We hear why tech giant Infosys has teamed up with Trinity College in Hartford to train and recruit new hires. Later, we learn how some colleges are bringing together the best parts of a liberal arts program with a focus on the skills needed in today’s workforce.    

The idea of what a college education should be has changed over the years. This hour: what’s the value of a liberal arts degree in the twenty-first century?

We hear why tech giant Infosys has teamed up with Trinity College in Hartford to train and recruit new hires. Later, we learn how some colleges are bringing together the best parts of a liberal arts program with a focus on the skills needed in today’s workforce.    

The United States Department of Labor Secretary was in Connecticut on Tuesday, April 16 to see for himself efforts to reskill the state’s manufacturing workforce.

Grocery chain Stop & Shop said on Friday, April 12 that a majority of its Connecticut stores are still open even though union workers have gone on strike.