While many small businesses see this as a complex topic, the National Restaurant Association (the other NRA) primarily lobbies for fast food chains across the country to block minimum wage increases and also works against laws for earned paid sick leave or other benefits.
A national coalition of employers has introduced legislation in the South Carolina House of Representatives that would create an alternative to workers’ compensation similar to the Oklahoma “Option.”
South Carolina's Small Business Chamber of Commerce has now publicly advocated for a federal minimum wage increase, to $10.10. South Carolina has no state mandate on the minimum wage, meaning that only a federal increase would benefit the state's workers in the near term.
As Washington plows toward the legalization of pot, it's finding that getting the cannabis market off the ground has been even tougher than anyone imagined. Among the frustrated are growers who have been waiting months for permission to start raising their bar-coded plants; advocates who wish more public health messaging had been done by now; and would-be pot vendors who say bad luck, minor oversights on their applications, or errors by state officials have torpedoed otherwise promising efforts.
The fourth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act's signing is important to recognize. It has been a long four years of continuous fighting against the negativity and outright lies of its opponents. On this day, it's also important to listen when a small business details the health law's benefits for both employers and employees.
Secretary of State John Kerry needs to talk with U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. Better yet, he should come see the South Carolina coast firsthand. Even a two- to three-foot rise in sea level will inundate many commercial areas and residential communities and destroy vital infrastructure. And this means we won’t be waiting until the end of the century to see our small-business coastal tourism economy start disappearing. It might be, as some scientists predict, only 30 to 40 years.
A "real job creator" calls into Sam Seder's show and shares her story about the horrors associated with Obamacare: No rise in premiums, less discrimination for women seeking insurance, and a simpler process for her 15-20 employees. Oh, the horror!
Ross Perot coined the phrase “giant sucking sound” in the Presidential debates of 1998. He was talking about the jobs he (correctly) predicted that would leave the United States in the search for cheaper labor if we passed NAFTA. Today’s giant sucking sound is the $25 billion not going into our economy if Congress doesn’t pass an extension of the federal supplemental unemployment insurance for those facing long-term joblessness due to the Great Recession.
Big business lobbies try to scare voters into believing that all business opposes increasing the minimum wage, and that it would cost jobs. But many small business owners actually support increasing the wage, because it would boost the economy by putting money into the pockets of workers who will turn around and spend it right away. Plus, it's the right thing to do.
The federal government shutdown could leave America's craft brewers with a serious hangover. Stores will still offer plenty of suds. But the shutdown has closed an obscure agency that quietly approves new breweries, recipes and labels, which could create huge delays throughout the rapidly growing craft industry, whose customers expect a constant supply of inventive and seasonal beers.
