[PEN-L:4683] FW: BLS Daily Report

[Richardson_D <RichardD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

DAILY LABOR REPORT, FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1996

Rising for the second straight week, new claims for state UI increased 6,000

to a seasonally adjusted total of 360,000 for the week ended June 8, says
the Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor
....(Daily Labor Report, page D-4; Wall Street Journal, page A2)_____The New

York Times (page D4) says the rise is an indication that job growth may
already be moderating ....

With little agreement on what constitutes contingent work, employers should
push for federal policy changes that will clarify how they deal with the
increasingly important flexible workforce, say speakers at a conference
sponsored by the National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services
(Daily Labor Report, pages 2,A-12).  The association, which represents more
than 1,400 independent staffing companies, held its first Future Work Force
Summit ....In describing the sometimes confusing history of what contingent
work has come to mean, economist Marvin Kosters of the American Enterprise
Institute cited government data showing that contingent workers (usually
those who have been in their jobs a year or less and/or expect to be there a

short time) constitute about  2  percent of the U.S. workforce.  He also
said that  "one of the major virtues of temporary help firms is that they
tend to facilitate changes in the labor market" ....

Gasoline prices could drop as much as 10 cents a gallon this summer, the
Energy Department said ....An Energy Department study ordered by President
Clinton said a sharp rise in gasoline prices this spring was triggered by a
combination of low inventories, an unusually long, cold winter, uncertainty
over Iraq's reentry into the world oil market, and unusually high demand
....(New York Times, page D4; Washington Post, page D2)_____The department
will continue looking into the oil industry's practice of
"lower-than-historical crude and product inventory levels" and
"just-in-time" inventories, which officials identified as a major factor
behind steep retail gasoline-price increases (Washington Times, page B7).

A new study of large U.S. corporations finds that co-workers are the most
frequent perpetrators in report cases of sexual harassment.  The study,
conducted by the New York-based American Management Association for The
Washington Post, found that of 1,366 sexual harassment complaints brought to

the attention of officials at a sampling of U.S. companies, about half the
cases involved the victims' peers or co-workers.  In contrast, only about 26

percent involved the victims' direct supervisors ....(Washington Post, page
D1).

"Formula Fight over Counting Heads" is the title of a "Commentary" in the
Washington Times by Maggie Gallagher, a nationally syndicated columnist.
 Gallagher writes, "As any Washington veteran can tell you, it's the formula

fights in Congress that are the worst.  That may explain how a once low-key
technical debate among academics over how to run the Census has erupted into

a partisan political battle.  In one corner is Florida Rep. Carrie Meek, a
black Democrat, who charges that new Census Bureau methods shortchange
minorities.  In the other corner is Wisconsin Rep. Tom Petri, a Republican,
who charges the Census Bureau is replacing head counts with politically
manipulable "guesstimates" ....In the middle lies the beleaguered Commerce
Department, which innocently announced that it planned to introduce new
sampling techniques to adjust for the systematic undercount of poor
minorities in the U.S. Census.  A formula fight is what happens whenever
Congress, nominally agreed on a goal, has to decide how actually to divvy up

the taxpayers' money.  And in the emerging Census squabble, the stakes are
even higher:  not just money, but political power ...."