Wakefield High School Budget (FY 2010)

Ever wondered how much the average salary is for...

A Wakefield High School teacher? $60,380
A Wakefield High School librarian? $67,453
A Wakefield High School athletic director? $91,044
A Wakefield High School guidance counselor? $68,265
A Wakefield High School administrator? $95,760
A Wakefield High School clerical secretary? $40,879
A Wakefield High School nurse? $60,385

Of course, I did all the division myself, but you can visit the FY10Budget page and see all the numbers for yourself.

Domestic Enslavement in USA

The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.

The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores. - Yahoo!

Read about Shyima, who was enslaved.

Ivy League Has Edge

Even though graduates from all types of schools increase their earnings throughout their careers, their incomes grow at almost the same rate, according to the survey. For instance, the median starting salary for Ivy Leaguers is 32% higher than that of liberal-arts college graduates -- and at 10 or more years into graduates' working lives, the spread is 34%, according to the survey.

One reason why Ivy Leaguers outpace their peers may be that they tend to choose roles where they're either managing or providing advice, says David Wise, a senior consultant at Hay Group Inc., a global management-consulting firm based in Philadelphia. By contrast, state-school graduates gravitate toward individual contributor and support roles. "Ivy Leaguers probably position themselves better for job opportunities that provide them with significant upside," says Mr. Wise , adding that this is the first survey he's seen that correlates school choice to a point later in a career.

Also, more Ivy League graduates go into finance roles than graduates of other schools, and employers pay a premium for them, says Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Dartmouth kids get paid more for the same job than kids from Rutgers are [doing]," he says. - Wall Street Journal

Is this surprising? Not really. I think Jason is the only Class of '08 student going to an Ivy...am I right?

Federal Minimum Wage Raised

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 2 million Americans get a raise Thursday as the federal minimum wage rises 70 cents. The bad news: Higher gas and food prices are swallowing it up, and some small businesses will pass the cost of the wage hike to consumers.

The increase, from $5.85 to $6.55 per hour, is the second of three annual increases required by a 2007 law. Next year's boost will bring the federal minimum to $7.25 an hour.

Workers like Walter Jasper, who earns minimum wage at a car wash in Nashville, Tenn., are happy to take the raise, but will still struggle with the higher gas and food prices hammering Americans.

"It will help out a little," said Jasper, who with his fiancee support a family of seven, and who earns the minimum plus commissions when customers order premium car-wash services.

The bus fare he pays each day to get to work already went up to $4.80 this spring from $4. "I'd like to be on a job where I can at least get a car," he said.

Last week, the Labor Department reported the fastest inflation since 1991 — 5 percent for June compared with a year earlier. Energy costs soared nearly 25 percent. The price of food rose more than 5 percent. - Associated Press

$6.55 is unjust; $9.00 is more like it.

Killing Jobs To Save Climate

The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.

They sat silently through two lectures, but then they couldn't control their anger any longer. The civil servants from the Environment Ministry, the Environment Agency and the German Emissions Trading Authority made it sound easy for industry to take up carbon trading. It was just too much for the managers to tolerate.

"If that's the shape the trading will take, we will simply move our cement operation to Ukraine," a cement factory manager shouted into the lecture hall. "Then there won't be any trading here, nothing will be produced here anymore -- the lights will simply go out here." - Spiegel Online

A no-win situation at its finest.

Christianity In Chinese Workplace

Beijing - A spiffy corporate campus in China isn't exactly where you'd expect to find a four-foot-tall wooden cross, let alone a church filled with Chinese singing hymns.

But that's what's happening on the Beijing and other campuses of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company (SMIC), whose founding CEO is an enthusiastic evangelical Christian.

A leader in what Beijing considers a highly strategic industry, the chipmaking company has secured unusual leeway for free worship from a government that's extremely cautious about organized religion.

But despite their often hard line on religion, in practice, Chinese authorities use a sliding scale of religious control – influenced in part by how much a group contributes to a prosperous and "harmonious" society.- Christian Science Monitor

Sounds better than an atheistic influence in the workplace.

Economy Hits Women Hard

New York - This economic downturn is taking a particularly hard toll on women, according to some experts.

The reasons: Much of the downturn is focused on the real estate market, where a disproportionately large number of women work, and substantially more women than men have subprime mortgages. But experts point to another cause: Women simply earn less than men, an estimated average of 80 cents for every dollar made by a man.

"Even though women may not lose as many jobs as men, they are more vulnerable simply because their incomes are lower to start with at the beginning of the downturn," says Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women's Policy Research in Washington. "They're also more likely to be supporting children, so for them any disruption in their income is very, very serious."- Christian Science Monitor

“The economy” doesn’t exist as a hard and fast reality, but only as a discursive construction. Likewise, “social classes” are only articulations of the mind, expressed through concepts and theoretical explanations that can be translated into political and social “truths.” - Envio