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Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday. The company will also pay $3.4 million in civil penalties under the agreement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It also agrees to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek Law going forward. A company spokeswoman said Starbucks is committed to operating responsibly and in compliance with all applicable local laws and regulations in every market where it does business, but also noted the complexities of the citys law. This [law] is notoriously challenging to manage, and this isnt just a Starbucks issue. Nearly every retailer in the city faces these roadblocks, spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said. Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will receive $50 for each week worked from July 2021 through July 2024, the department said. Workers who experienced a violation after that may be eligible for compensation by filing a complaint with the department. The $38.9 million settlement also guarantees employees laid off during recent store closings in the city will get the chance for reinstatement at other company locations. The city began investigating in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints against several Starbucks locations, and eventually expanded its investigation to the hundreds of stores in the city. The probe found that most Starbucks employees never got regular schedules and the company routinely reduced employees hours by more than 15%, making it difficult for staffers to know their regular weekly earnings and plan for other commitments, such as child care, education, or other jobs. The company also routinely denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts, leaving them involuntarily in part-time status, according to the city. The agreement with New York comes as Starbucks union continues a nationwide strike at dozens of locations that began last month. The number of affected stores and the strike’s impact remain in dispute by the two sides.
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E-Commerce
Cat Murphy, a college student, has wanted to be a journalist since she was 11. Many of her friends don’t understand why. When they engage with the news if they do they hear a cacophony of voices. They don’t know who to believe. Reporters are biased. They make mistakes. Besides, why would you hitch your future to a dying industry? There is a lot of commentary Oh, good for you. Look what youre walking into. You’re going to be screaming into the void. You’re going to be useless,’ said Murphy, a 21-year-old graduate student at the University of Maryland’s journalism school. She is undeterred. And it’s also why she’s not surprised by the findings of a study this fall that documented negative attitudes toward the news media among 13- to 18-year-old Americans. The press rarely fares well in surveys of adults, but it’s sobering to see the same disdain among people whose opinions about the world are still forming. Words to describe the news media today Asked by the News Literacy Project for one word to describe today’s news media, 84% of teens responded with something negative biased, crazy, boring, fake,” bad,” depressing, confusing, scary. About half of the teens surveyed believe journalists give advertisers special treatment, make up details such as quotes, or pay or do favors for sources always or almost always or often, and about 6 in 10 say journalists regularly take photos and videos out of context. About one-third or less believe that reporters correct errors when they happen, confirm facts before reporting them, gather information from multiple sources or cover stories that help protect the public interest at least often practices ingrained in the DNA of reputable journalists. To some degree, teens reflect the attitudes they’re exposed to, particularly when the most prominent politician of their age has made fake news a mantra. Experts say few teens follow news regularly or learn in school about the purpose of journalism. Journalists don’t help themselves with mistakes or ethical lapses that make headlines. Opinionated reporters or commentators in an era of political division make readers wonder what to believe. Some of this (attitude) is earned, but much of it is based on misperception, said Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and design for the Washington-based News Literacy Project. Never picking up the news habit There are ways to turn things around, but it will take work. Many of Lily Ogburn’s classmates get their information from social media. Their parents didn’t watch or read news reports as they grew up, so they didn’t pick up the habit, said Ogburn, a senior at Northwestern University’s journalism school. Ogburn is the former editor-in-chief at the well-regarded Daily Northwestern student newspaper. The newspaper’s 2023 reports on alleged hazing and racism within the school’s football program led to the ouster of its coach. Still, she found some students don’t understand the newspaper’s role; they believe it exists to protect people in power rather than hold them accountable. She frequently had to explain what she did to classmates. There’s a lot of mistrust toward journalists, she said. But it has firmed her resolve to stick with the profession. I want to be a journalist that people trust,” Ogburn said, and I want to report news that makes people believe and trust in the media. The news industry’s financial troubles over the past two decades have hollowed out newsrooms and left fewer journalists on duty. Along with not seeing much legitimate journalism, young people frequently don’t experience it through popular culture unlike a previous generation, which learned in detail how Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed the Watergate scandal in the Academy Award-winning movie All the President’s Men. When the News Literacy Project asked, two-thirds of teens couldn’t think of anything when asked what movies or TV shows came to mind when they think about journalism. Those who had answers most frequently cited the Spider-Man franchise or the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.” Neither portrayal was particularly flattering. Upon retiring as editor of Newsday, Howard Schneider helped develop the State University of New York system’s first School of Journalism. But instead of teaching future writers, editors or producers, he became drawn to teaching non-journalists about being news consumers. Now the executive director of SUNY Stony Brook’s Center for News Literacy, Schneider wasn’t surprised about any of the recent survey’s findings, either. The negativity, the feeling that news is biased, is just a reflection of how their parents feel, Schneider said. The more exposed to news, legitimate news, the more their attitudes turn positive. He has developed news literacy programs for school districts. Students will say, I get my news from YouTube, he said. I say, ‘No, you don’t,'” and explains where the news originates and how to be discerning about what they see. Lessons from a news literacy class That’s one of the lessons that 16-year-old Brianne Boyack has taken from her course in news literacy at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. She had little trust in news going in, but has learned the importance of double-checking sources when she sees something interesting and seeking outlets she’s found reliable. Her classmate, Rhett MacFarlane, applied what he learned in class to investigate when a friend told him the Louvre was robbed in Paris. I’ve learned that there is definitely fact-checking (in journalism), MacFarlane, also 16, told The Associated Press. You guys are professionals and you have to tell the truth or you’d be fired. I thought you guys just did whatever you wanted and chose what to say about a topic. Still, news literacy programs in schools are relatively rare. Schools already have a lot of subjects to cover to prepare students for the future. And, remember, journalists don’t have the best reputations. It can be hard for educators to stick their necks out for them. There’s an inertia here, Schneider said, and this is an urgent issue. At the University of Maryland, Murphy said she didn think there was an inherent hatred toward journalists among her fellow students. They dont have any experience reading journalism, she said. That’s where she sees the journalism industry needing to make more of an effort. One of the things she finds most frustrating about her chosen field is a resistance to change, particularly an unwillingness or inability to make meaningful use of social media. Theres very little movement in the direction of going to where people are, as opposed to expecting them to come to where you are, Murphy said. The only way to turn it around is going to be to switch to doing things that captivate people today, as opposed to captivating people 20 years ago. David Bauder, AP media writer
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While national active inventory is still up year-over-year, the pace of growth has slowed since summer as some home sellers have thrown in the towel and delisted their properties. Indeed, according to Redfin, U.S. delistings as a share of inventory recently ticked up to 5.5%a decade-high reading for this time of year. Looking ahead, in markets seeing the biggest jumps in delistings right now, many of those listings will likely return to the resale market in spring 2026or test out the rental market. Without a corresponding increase in housing demand, that could lead to a faster-than-expected acceleration in inventory growth. More sellers are giving up because their homes have been sitting on the market for a long time, and they dont want to or cant afford to settle on accepting a low price,” says Asad Khan, a senior economist at Redfin. Many homes have a sticker price higher than buyers are willing to pay, but many sellers are unwilling to negotiate. When tens of thousands of homeowners pull their homes off the market rather than accept a low offer, it effectively reduces the supply of homes that are actually available for buyers. Of course, theres wide regional variation in delistings. Weaker and softer housing markets in places like Texas and Florida are currently seeing a higher share of delistings. Meanwhile, tighter housing markets in the Midwest are seeing a lower delisting rate. Many homeowners who bought during the pandemic demand frenzy still expect sky-high prices,” says Khan. “They remember a sellers market, so theyre hesitant to yield to buyers who want to negotiate the price down and/or ask for concessions. Recent buyers are also more likely to be testing the market; maybe they would sell and move up to a bigger home in a more desirable neighborhood if they get the price they want, but otherwise theyd stay put. Longtime owners, though, are more motivated to selltheyre often downsizing or relocating for retirement. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); The housing markets with the highest level of delistings are also the same places with the most “stale” inventoryhomes that have been on the market for over 60 days. window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Roughly one in five homes that were delisted over the summer were re-listed within three months: 20% of homes that were pulled off the market in July were subsequently re-listed, as were 18% of homes that were pulled in June,” writes Redfin. “Were including this metric because delisting is sometimes used as a selling strategy; some sellers take their homes off the market and subsequently relist at a lower price to avoid house hunters seeing a ‘price drop’ on their listing, and to reset the number of days their home has been on the market.” “Note that were looking at delistings over the summer rather than September to ensure that enough time has passed to determine whether a home was re-listed,” Redfin adds. “Of the homes that were delisted in July then put back on the market, 31.6% of them have sold.
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