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News from Worker Development, Industry, the Economy, Education, Science, and much more! |
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Best wishes to you, your family and staff for a safe and prosperous New Year!
From all of us at Proactive Technologies, Inc.
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From Innovation to Implementation – Success Depends on Preparedness of Those Executing |
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
How often does a product or service go straight from research and development to service implementation or product production? A skilled, experienced worker may be able to overcome the ambiguity of this hand-off, but it seems there is, today, a shortage of skilled, experienced workers; baby boomers finally decided they can, or have to, retire, or some companies experience high turnover rates of replacements, or most employers say they lack of skilled candidates…or even someone skilled enough to train them.
There are many reasons that this loosely organized hand-off still exists:
- Perhaps from a sense of futility, with engineers seeming to have given up on the notion of training workers first to ensure immediate output quantity, quality and consistency;
- Perhaps it is from knowing that the organization lacks a “system” in place to facilitate the transfer;
- Perhaps it is from the belief that, especially in the early stages, the product or service may go through many changes before a coherent, repeatable process settles in and when it does the next product or service has been introduced;
- Perhaps from a sense of superiority, that “I know how to do this [because I designed it] so everyone else should know what to do.”
For those who recognize the need for worker training and try to incorporate it manually while trying to keep up with engineering and technological innovations, it is common to find a training program released well into the last days of the life cycle - just in time to train workers for the things they made and serviced years before. Manual methods just do not keep up anymore, and they haven’t for the last 30 years. This doesn’t mean we should “leap-frog” to Artificial Intelligence or online training. The cost alone would dissuade anyone from utilizing it for this type of task-specific training, never mind the inappropriateness.
The most efficient and effective path to expediting a process from development of the process (including all pertinent aspects) to implementation is displayed below. The task should be the central focus, with each stakeholder department contributing its input and metrics of accurate performance. Simply stated, the engineer can draft a process, then the other departments can add their components in order. Once all inputs are in, everyone can review and make changes based on each other’s observations and comments before a final document is released. Read More
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Retiring Workers and the Tragic Loss of Intellectual Property and Value |
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations - Eastern U.S. - Proactive Technologies, Inc.
The warnings went out over three decades ago. Baby Boomers were soon to retire, taking their accumulated expertise – locked in their brains - with them. But very little was done to address this problem. Call it complacency, lack of awareness of the emerging problem, preoccupation with quarterly performance, disinterest or disbelief, very few companies took action and the Crash of 2008 disrupted any meager efforts that were underway.
Over a decade ago, Steve Minter in an IndustryWeek Magazine article on April 10, 2012 stated, “Only 17% of organizations said they had developed processes to capture institutional memory/organizational knowledge from employees close to retirement.” Who is going to train their replacements once they are gone? Would the learning curve of replacement workers be as long and costly, repeating the same learning mistakes, as the retiree’s learning curve? Would operations be disrupted and, if so, to what level?
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“In our new “outsourcing nation,” a widely held belief is that employees are simply costs to be cut and not assets to be valued.” …. “Manufacturing faces a two-sided problem: it not only has thousands of people retiring, but it does not have the training programs to train skilled workers to replace them.”
A Strategy to Capture Tribal Knowledge
IndustryWeek- Michael Collins 5-23-16
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In the last few years, it seems an alternative to the concentration of expertise in a few subject matter experts has become to use lower-wage temporary or contract workers who specialize in smaller quantities of processes, and who can be “traded-out” with a minimum amount of disruption. History will tell us just how costly that approach was and if anything was learned. Read More
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Proactive Technologies' Turnkey Package Offers for Prospective and Returning Clients - Discount Window Now Open! |
Proactive Technologies, Inc. - Staff
The world has been through a lot in the last few decades. Employers finding themselves making decisions and changing their mind for the most unexpected reasons. Proactive Technologies, Inc.® wants to accommodate and support those workforce development decisions in the best way it knows how. This introduction for new and returning clients of its turnkey worker development package is one example.
Value comes in many forms. Sometimes value stares us in the face but we may not realize it…or fully realize it. Like a software we purchase but only use 10% of its functions, a car that we seldom drive, or the treadmill that sits in its original packaging. Underutilized value not only represents a minimal return on an investment, it is a lost opportunity to maximize its potential and an inefficient use of capital.
Undeveloped or under-developed worker capacity is a lost opportunity to increase return on worker investment and reduce labor costs. Multiply this experience by the number of employees you have and the loss can be substantial! This is a fact that should be obvious and continually frustrates many a CEO or Operations Manager. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Every employer conducts a massive amount of informal, unstructured and undocumented on-the-job, task-based training every year. The significant cost of inefficiency (especially if you have a lot of retiring experts, revolving new-hires and marginally trained residents), as well as the effectiveness, usually goes unmeasured. If you doubt this point, ask yourself one question; Do I know which tasks each of my employees have mastered, and which they have not? If you draw a blank, you are not alone. Read More
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Quality Policies and Process Sheets Do Not Replace Training |
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
A very common fallacy in business operations is that a description of what should be done listed in a quality policy, such as a quality control policy or a quality assurance plan, that seems to be sufficient for the training component of ISO/IATF/AS certification meets, therefore, the company’s training requirement in general. Perhaps this false equivalency is wrongly supported by the additional fallacy that the existence of standard work instructions is the equivalent of on-the-job training plans. Too often this is used to defend the belief that this replaces formal task-based training.
Sometimes this leads to the rationalization that if the company keeps it simple and barely meets what an ISO/IATF/AS auditor might accept for their certification purposes, the training requirement is covered. But an auditor at that stage is just looking at what the company is intending to do, not how they carry it out. That is discovered later.
This false assumption is challenged when product or services turn up defective, and customers expect an explanation and a corrective action. This is when a weak, or no, connection can be drawn between the policy that guides quality standards, work processes and who trained and certified the employee to perform the task independently is discovered. This is when the records that exist, if any, do not support the assumption that mastery of the task ever occurred. This is when the customer loses faith in the producer or supplier – not just in the task(s) isolated in the one incident, but possibly performance of all tasks on which they depend.
From a learning perspective, manufacturing environments present hurdle after hurdle to learning and mastering the work to be performed. Unrelenting production schedules, technology advancements and continuous improvement efforts – all offer little room for deliberate task-based training while changing the task out from under the worker while they are trying to learn and master it.
It is in the employer’s and employee's interest that the job, and all of its required tasks, are mastered as quickly and completely as possible. But the spoils go to those employees who possess the core skills and necessary abilities to assimilate what they see around them and successfully self-teach themselves. Unfortunately, employers find those people hard to find as technology renders previous skill requirements moot (only the employer has those ever-changing, task-based skill requirements) and are reluctant to pay the experts they have accordingly to keep them. Read More
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IN THIS ISSUE:
Proactive Technologies, Inc. Worker Development News
Industry News
Financial News
Economic News
International News
International Trade News
Education and Workforce Development News
Training and Organizational Development News
Quality News
Science
Cyber and IT News
Human Resources Management News
Environmental, Health & Safety News
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Proactive Technologies, Inc.® -
capturing worker expertise to build and support job specific, task-based worker development programs (with metric-based solutions) since 1986.
Experience the power of the
Develop all the expert workers you need in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the investment! Increased worker capacity, work quality and quantity, and worker compliance (ISO9001:2015, AS9100D, IATF16949, engineering and quality specifications, and safety requirements)."
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U.S. Department of Commerce - Bureau of Economic Analysis |
Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits (Revised Estimate), and GDP by Industry, Third Quarter 2023
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023, according to the “third” estimate. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.1 percent. The increase in the third quarter primarily reflected increases in consumer spending and inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.
Profits increased 3.4 percent at a quarterly rate in the third quarter after increasing 0.2 percent in the second quarter.
In the third quarter, the value added of private goods-producing industries increased 10.2 percent, private services-producing industries increased 4.1 percent, and government increased 2.0 percent. Overall, 14 of 22 industry groups contributed to the third-quarter increase in real GDP. Read Report
Personal Income and Outlays, November, 2022
Personal income increased $81.6 billion (0.4 percent at a monthly rate) in November, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (tables 2 and 3). Disposable personal income (DPI), personal income less personal current taxes, increased $71.9 billion (0.4 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $46.7 billion (0.2 percent).
The PCE price index decreased 0.1 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent (table 5). Real DPI increased 0.4 percent in November and real PCE increased 0.3 percent; goods increased 0.5 percent and services increased 0.2 percent (tables 3 and 4). Read Report
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U.S. Department of Commerce - Bureau of the Census |
Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders
New orders for manufactured goods in October, down following two consecutive monthly increases, decreased $21.8 billion or 3.6 percent to $576.8 billion. October 2023: -3.6° % Change; September 2023 (r): +2.3° % Change. Read Report
Manufacturing and Trade Inventory and Sales
U.S. total business end-of-month inventories for October 2023 were $2,550.0 billion, down 0.1 percent (+/- 0.1 percent)* from last month. U.S. total business sales were $1,856.2 billion, down 1.0 percent (+/- 0.2 percent) from last month. October 2023: -0.1* % Change in Inventories. September 2023 I: +0.2 % Change in Inventories. Read Report
Household Pulse Survey
What is the Household Pulse Survey?
The U.S. Census Bureau, in collaboration with multiple federal agencies, is in a unique position to produce data on the social and economic effects of coronavirus on American households. The Household Pulse Survey is designed to deploy quickly and efficiently, collecting data to measure household experiences during the coronavirus pandemic. Data will be disseminated in near real-time to inform federal and state response and recovery planning. Read Data
Small Business Pulse Survey
The Small Business Pulse Survey (Business Pulse) measures the effect of changing business conditions during the Coronavirus pandemic on our nation's small businesses. Business Pulse complements existing U.S. Census Bureau data collections by providing high-frequency, detailed information on the challenges small businesses are facing during the Coronavirus pandemic as well as their participation in federal programs such as the Paycheck Protection Program. Read Report
Monthly State Retail Sales
The Monthly State Retail Sales (MSRS) is the Census Bureau's new experimental data product featuring modeled state-level retail sales. This is a blended data product using Monthly Retail Trade Survey data, administrative data, and third-party data. Year-over-year percent changes are available for Total Retail Sales excluding Nonstore Retailers as well as 11 retail North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) retail subsectors. These data are provided by state and NAICS codes beginning with January 2019. The Census Bureau plans to continue to improve the methodology to be able to publish more data in the future. Access Tables
Economic Indicators
A composite of many of the requested domestic facts and figures. Visit Table
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U. S. Department of Labor Statistics |
Consumer Price Index
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.1 percent in November on a
seasonally adjusted basis, after being unchanged in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for shelter continued to rise in November, offsetting a decline in the gasoline index. The energy index fell 2.3 percent over the month as a 6.0-percent decline in the gasoline index more than offset increases in other energy component indexes. The food index increased 0.2 percent in November, after rising 0.3 percent in October. The index for food at home increased 0.1 percent over the month and the index for food away from home rose 0.4 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in November, after rising 0.2 percent in October. Read Report
Producer Price Index
The Producer Price Index for final demand was unchanged in November, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices decreased 0.4 percent in October and rose 0.4 percent in September. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand increased 0.9 percent for the 12 months ended in November.
In November, the indexes for both final demand goods and for final demand services were unchanged.
The index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services edged up 0.1 percent in November, the sixth consecutive advance. For the 12 months ended in November, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services rose 2.5 percent. Read Report
Job Openings and Labor Turnover
The number of job openings decreased to 8.7 million on the last business day of October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, the number of hires and total separations changed little at 5.9 million and 5.6 million, respectively. Within separations, quits (3.6 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.6 million) changed little. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the total nonfarm sector, by industry, and by establishment size class.
Job Openings
On the last business day of October, the number of job openings decreased to 8.7 million (-617,000).
The job openings rate, at 5.3 percent, decreased by 0.3 percentage point over the month and 1.1 points
over the year. Over the month, job openings decreased in health care and social assistance (-236,000), finance and insurance (-168,000), and real estate and rental and leasing (-49,000). Job openings increased in information (+39,000). (See table 1.). Read Report
Unemployment Rate for States
Unemployment Rates for States, Seasonally Adjusted. Read Report
Civilian Labor Participation Rate
For a 20 year chart of the U.S. Civilian Labor Participation Rate. Read Report
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U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index |
University of Buffalo - School of Management
The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI) assesses job quality in the United States by measuring desirable higher-wage/higher-hour jobs versus lower-wage/lower-hour jobs. The JQI results also may serve as a proxy for the overall health of the U.S. jobs market, since the index enables month-by-month tracking of the direction and degree of change in high-to-low job composition.
By tracking this information, policymakers and financial market participants can be more fully informed of past developments, current trends, and likely future developments in the absence of policy intervention. Economists and international organizations have in recent years developed other, complementary conceptions of job quality such as those addressing the emotional satisfaction employees derive from their jobs.
For the purposes of this JQI, “job quality” means the weekly dollar-income a job generates for an employee. Payment, after all, is a primary reason why people work: the income generated by a job being necessary to maintain a standard of living, to provide for the essentials of life and, hopefully, to save for retirement, among other things. Read Report
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Realtime Inequality - Who Benefits from Income and Wealth Growth in the United States? |
University of California, Berkeley - Thomas Blanchet, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman; Department of Economics
Realtime Inequality provides the first timely statistics on how economic growth is distributed across groups. When new growth numbers come out each quarter, we show how each income and wealth group benefits.
Controlling for price inflation, average national income per adult in the United States increased at an annualized rate of 2.2% in the first quarter of 2023, and average income for the bottom 50% grew by 1.5%. National income is similar to GDP and a better indicator of income earned by US residents. Visit the Methodology page for complete methodological details. Review Data
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Axle Logistics Expands Knoxville, Tennessee, Operations |
Area Development – News Desk
Axle Logistics plans to expand operations at its headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. The $37.9 million project is expected to create 651 jobs over the next five years in Knox County.
The investment will include a new 85,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the company’s existing location on North Central Street.
“I would like to thank the TNECD along with the Knoxville and Knox County mayors for their support in this exciting next step. Axle Logistics is committed to creating more jobs while doing our part to retain the country’s best and brightest right here in East Tennessee,” Shawn McLeod, president, Axle Logistics said. Read Article
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ISM Report: Manufacturing Continues to Contract in November |
IndustryWeek – Anna Smith
Two of the six biggest manufacturing industries reported growth in November, notes the report.
Manufacturing economic activity contracted for the 13th consecutive month in November, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s November 2023 manufacturing sector report. The Purchasing Manager’s Index registered 46.7%, unchanged from the previous month; this reading also indicates a contraction of the overall economy.
“All of the five subindexes that directly factor into the Manufacturing PMI are in contraction territory, up from four in October,” says Timothy Fiore, chair of the ISM’s manufacturing business survey committee. Read Article
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UAW Says Over 1,000 Workers at VW Plant in Tennessee Have Signed Cards Seeking Union Representation |
AP News
DETROIT (AP) — More than 1,000 workers at Volkswagen’s Tennessee factory have signed cards authorizing a vote on representation by the United Auto Workers, the first plant in the nation to reach that milestone in the UAW’s quest to organize more than a dozen nonunion factories.
The union said Thursday that the VW workers signed on in less than a week.
The factory in Chattanooga employs about 3,800 people who make the VW ID.4 electric vehicle and the Atlas family of gas-powered SUVs. It could become the first test of the union’s strategy to simultaneously try to organize the nonunion plants. Read Article
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What Are the Obstacles to Reshoring? |
IndustryWeek – Michael Collins
US manufacturing is moving in the right direction, but too slowly.
In 2022, 364,000 jobs were reshored (up 53% from 2021), according to the Reshoring Initiative. The reasons for this new growth were threefold:
Manufacturers are nervous about relations with China and are bringing production back to the U.S.
Biden administration initiatives—the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Bill, and the Chips Act—have offered both direction and financial security for companies willing to invest in American manufacturing.
Third, tariffs are working. A good example is the Section 232 tariffs for the steel and aluminum industries.
Reshoring is moving in the right direction, but at its current rate, it will take over 30 years to reach President Joe Biden’s goal of 5 million new manufacturing jobs. Read Article
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Reshoring and Foreign Investment Driving US Job Creation |
American Machinist – Robert Brooks
Nearly 300,000 jobs are projected, largely from greenfield chipmaking and EV battery plants as a result of U.S. industrial policy and manufacturers assessing “geopolitical risk”, countering a long “offshoring” cycle.
During the first half of 2023, nearly 300,0000 announced new U.S. jobs were attributable to businesses’ “reshoring” activity plus foreign direct investment, the Reshoring Initiative reported – in line with the record total of jobs reported for 2022 reshoring activity. According to the Reshoring Initiative, those new jobs will be predominantly the result new plants to manufacture electric-vehicle batteries and semiconductor chips, “along with other essential product industries supported by Bidenomics,” according to a release.
The group also identified “geopolitical risk” as a prompter for businesses’ to reevaluate their “supply chain priorities.” Read Article
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Stellantis Warns Thousands in US of Potential Job Cuts |
IndustryWeek – Agence France-Presse
Stellantis has notified thousands of workers in the U.S. states of Ohio and Michigan of potential layoffs, attributing the move partly to California rules that limit where vehicles can be sold.
The European automaker on Thursday notified 2,455 workers in Detroit and 1,225 in Ohio of potential job loss under the federal Warn Act, which requires early notification of major layoffs.
The company expects the actual number of layoffs to be “much lower” than the Detroit figure and “slightly lower” than the Ohio number, said Stellantis spokeswoman Jodi Tinson. Read Article
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Small Businesses Limp Toward 2024 With Gloomier Outlook, Surveys Show |
CFO Dive – Jim Tyson, Senior Reporter
Confidence among CEOs and economists in the prospects for the economy is not shared by small businesses.
Dive Brief:
- Small business confidence in the economy dimmed during the past several weeks amid persistent price pressures and a tight labor market, according to two recent surveys.
- More than half of small businesses identified inflation as one of their biggest challenges, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found in a survey, aligning with results from a poll by the National Federation of Independent Business.
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At least two out of five small businesses reported difficulty filling open jobs, according to the surveys. “With inflation still outpacing revenue expectations, small business owners are wary of the future and continue to have an overall negative impression about the national economy,” Tom Sullivan, the chamber’s vice president of small business policy, said in a statement. Read Article
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German Appliance Manufacturer to Open US Assembly Plant |
Assembly Magazine
OPELIKA, AL—German appliance manufacturer Miele is investing $657.7 million to build establish a new assembly plant here—its first in the U.S.
In Phase I of the project, the company will occupy an existing facility in Opelika and create more than 150 jobs by 2026. For Phase II, Miele has plans to build a new, 800,000-square-foot factory. To be completed by 2030, that facility is expected to create approximately 837 jobs. Read Article
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Classes alone will not close the "skills gap," but structured on-the-job training can...every time! |
Under-capacity of workers is an enormous source of untapped value and unrealized return on worker investment. In addition, standardizing expert task performance -between workers and shifts - can add to worker ROI through lower scrap and rework.
- Increased worker capacity, productivity, work quantity, work quality and compliance (specifications, ISO/AS/IATF programs and safety mandates);
- Decreased internal costs of training
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Higher return on worker investment! You would be surprised how small of an investment is needed to unlock enormous returns.
If budgets are tight, Proactive Technologies, Inc. can be an extension to your training department, with our technical implementation support - included with every project!
There's nothing to lose by taking a minute to contact us to learn more.
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If your institution is interested in becoming a Proactive Technologies, Inc. project partner, contact a representative for more information. |
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Audit Quality Questioned at Baruch Conference |
CFO.com – Vincent Ryan, Senior Reporter-at-Large
PCAOB Chair Erica Williams said the audit overseer “will not hesitate to take action to hold those who put investors at risk accountable.”
Representatives from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) had one overarching message at the Baruch College auditing conference on Tuesday: the overseer is “laser-focused” on investor protection and is gunning for auditing firms that are reckless or negligent.
PCAOB Chair Erica Williams, appearing in a pre-recorded video shown to the 75 or so auditors, policymakers, and academics in attendance, emphasized the record $11.9 million in fines the PCAOB has hit auditors with in calendar year 2023. Williams promised more enforcement actions penalizing firms for audit deficiencies before the year was out. Read Article
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First OCC Fintech Chief Had Phony Resume: Reports |
CFO.com – Gabrielle Saulsbery, Reporter
Prashant Bhardwaj alleged he held positions at Huntington and Fifth Third — and at Citi at a time when he would have been 13, according to a resume The Information obtained through FOIA.
This article was first published by Banking Dive and republished by CFO.com.
The departure of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s first-ever chief financial technology officer may have resulted from several alleged lies on his resume, The Information and Fintech Business Weekly reported.
When the OCC hired Prashant Bhardwaj to lead its new fintech office in March, it credited his “nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector” and his education, including a master’s degree in business administration from the International Management Institute in Brussels. Read Article
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Shareholder Files Class-Action Lawsuit Against Fisker |
IndustryWeek
The case claims the electric vehicle company failed to disclose shortcomings in its financial reporting processes.
A shareholder in electric-vehicle startup Fisker Inc. has filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, according to Robbins LLP, a firm specializing in shareholder rights that informed investors of the action.
The crux of the case comes from executives allegedly not properly disclosing what they called a “material weakness” in internal control over financial reporting. The suit centers around the recent reporting of Fisker’s third-quarter financial results; here’s a timeline of what happened around that event: Read Article
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91% of Private Equity-Backed CFOs Have Job Security Concerns |
CFO.com – Adam Zaki, Reporter
Finance chiefs said they’ve become more concerned about their job security after their firms secured private equity funding, according to new data.
When a company is acquired, with the goal to ultimately flip the business for a profit, new decision-makers may make substantive changes. These changes can cause friction and create imbalances in the power dynamics of leadership. CFO turnover, already the highest among the C-Suite, may be increasing at these companies because of this dynamic, new data suggests.
According to Accordion’s State of the PE Sponsor and CFO Relationship Report, private equity (PE) firms are increasing the pressure on CFOs of the companies they purchase. More than nine in 10 (91%) of CFOs whose company is PE-backed worry about their job security amid the changes implemented by new ownership groups. Read Article
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FASB Targets Fix for Derivatives ‘Whack-a-Mole’ Problem |
CFO Dive – Maura Webber Sadovi, Senior Editor
The derivative project comes a month after the FASB moved ahead with developing a new standard for government grants.
Dive Brief:
- The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Wednesday to move ahead with a project to narrow the scope of financial arrangements that are subject to accounting standards for derivatives and hedging (Topic 815), in the latest new project stemming from concerns that emerged in U.S. accounting standards setter’s 2021 stakeholder outreach.
- The 7-0 decision to add the derivative matter to the U.S. standard-setting’s high priority technical agenda came after staff made a presentation asserting that confusion around the current definition of derivatives often means guidance inadvertently applies transactions that some believe were not originally intended to be included — such as certain arrangements related to R&D funding, ESG-linked financial instruments and litigation funding. In some cases, the staff said it heard companies are avoiding certain transactions to avoid triggering the accounting treatment.
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In voting to tackle refining what constitutes a derivative for the purposes of generally accepted accounting principles, FASB Member Frederick Cannon, said current guidance isn’t “intuitive,” leading financial instruments being classified as derivatives that many capital markets players would not consider to be so. The planned change is “getting us out of playing whack-a-mole with things that pop up as derivatives that aren’t,” Cannon said later in the meeting, according to a webcast on the FASB website. Read Article
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9 in 10 Finance Leaders Knowingly Making Decisions Off Bad Data |
CFO.com – Adam Zaki, Reporter
Most finance teams are aware of poor data quality, but still use it to make decisions, according to a new survey.
CFOs and finance teams have become data-reliant. The increase in automation, combined with new technologies dictating how finance teams develop and leverage data, makes a data a company’s second-strongest asset next to its people. But, the quality of that data may not be meeting standards.
According to Pigment’s Office of the CFO 2024: Expectations vs. Reality survey, CFOs are doing their best with the data at their disposal. But despite the confidence finance leaders are known to portray in their decision-making, the foundation of those decisions — the data — is knowingly poor. So much so that nearly 89% of CFOs say they are making decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete data on a monthly basis. Read Article
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Nearly Half of M&A Deals Wind Up in Accounting Disputes |
CFO.com – Adam Zaki, Reporter
Last year saw a significant amount of disputes around earn-out agreements and working capital adjustments during M&A transactions, according to new research.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A), an area slumping lately, is a strategy finance leaders had previously been keen on using this year. Whether a CFO is a buyer or a seller, tough regulators, expensive capital, and pandemic ripples have resulted in a less-than-ideal M&A market.
This past year, deals have been held up by a variety of accounting disputes. In a Grant Thornton survey of 189 US-based M&A professionals (including private equity investors, corporate development officers, and legal counsel) who had completed more than 1,300 deals in 2023, nearly half said their deals involved some type of accounting dispute — with 47% having an earn-out dispute and 46% a working capital dispute. While the number of deals has increased for the M&A leaders surveyed, the uptick in disputes has caused issues for buyers, sellers, and presumably their CFOs. Read Article
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FASB Pushes Crypto, Tax Rules Over Finish Line |
CFO Dive - Maura Webber Sadovi, Senior Editor
The U.S. standard setter has issued nine new accounting standards updates so far this year, compared to six in all of 2022.
Dive Brief:
- The Financial Accounting Standards Board took two final and largely anticipated steps in its rules-making process, separately issuing two of this year’s highest-profile new accounting standards updates — on the topics of crypto and taxes — effectively starting the clock for companies to prepare for the changes.
- The narrowly-focused new crypto standard issued Tuesday, which brings specific guidance for digital assets into generally accepted accounting principles for the first time, applies to Bitcoin and certain other crypto assets but excludes non-fungible tokens, and will require companies to account for them at fair value rather than treating them as an intangible asset. The rules are effective for all entities’ fiscal years beginning after Dec. 15, 2024, according to a FASB release.
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The standards update for income tax accounting issued Thursday will require companies to break out more information in their reports on the income taxes they pay. For example, they will be required to report the jurisdictions — such as a country or state — that receive more than 5% of its total tax payments. The rules are effective for public companies for annual periods beginning after Dec. 15 2024 while private firms have another year before it’s effective, according to the release. Read Article
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A Tax Break Made for Smaller Manufacturers |
IndustryWeek – Luke Ervin
QSBS can be a powerful strategy to keep more gains from company shares.
Small business is the core of American business, generating 44% of U.S. economic activity and two-thirds of net new jobs over the past 25 years, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Yet many small business owners are unaware of Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) programs as a strategic option to save taxes, and how they and their investors might benefit. This plan’s tax benefit was initially instituted in the early 1990s to encourage investment and growth in small business.
QSBS is stock developed by an active, domestic C corporation whose gross assets—valued at the original cost—do not exceed $50 million on and immediately after its private stock issuance. In a QSBS program, shares of a qualified small business can be set up to share profits with employees and may be used as a form of irrevocable trust to help business owners save money upon sale of the business. Read Article
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“Head Of Legal And Compliance” for Multibillion-dollar Cryptocurrency Pyramid Scheme “OneCoin” Pleads Guilty |
Internal Revenue Service
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Irina Dilkinska pled guilty today in Manhattan federal court to wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection with her participation in the massive OneCoin fraud scheme. OneCoin, which began operations in 2014 and was based in Sofia, Bulgaria, marketed and sold a fraudulent cryptocurrency by the same name through a global multi-level-marketing (“MLM”) network. As a result of misrepresentations made about OneCoin, victims invested over $4 billion worldwide in the fraudulent cryptocurrency. Today, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos accepted Dilkinska’s guilty plea.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “As OneCoin’s so-called ‘Head of Legal and Compliance’ Irina Dilkinska accomplished the exact opposite goal of her position. As she has now admitted, Dilkinska facilitated the laundering of millions of dollars of illicit profits OneCoin accrued through its multi-level-marketing scheme. The dedicated prosecutors of this Office and our law enforcement partners will continue to pursue this important case until every defendant is brought to justice.” Read Release
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Rules Targeting Financial Criminals Will Require New Filings for Startups and Small Businesses |
GeekWire – Lisa Stiffler
Startup and small business owners take note: if your company has 20 or fewer full-time employees and gross annual sales of less than $5 million, there’s a new federal filing requirement that you need to know about.
Next year a key component of the Corporate Transparency Act comes into effect, requiring companies to report to the U.S. Treasury Department the names of their “beneficial owners.” The primary goal of the rules is to bring transparency to anonymous shell companies used to hide money laundering, finance terrorism and engage in other illegal activities. Read Article
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Is American Banking Safe? You Might Not Like The Answer from Two Fed Veterans |
Insititute for New Economic Thinking – Lynn Parramore
Walker Todd and Bill Bergman expose the untold story of banking instability, regulatory battles, and the struggle to protect the public from financial chaos
As anybody who lived through the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 knows, banking can be hazardous. Failures can hit millions hard, wiping out life savings, tossing the economy into chaos, and messing with investments, spending, and overall growth.
Capital requirements are supposed to be crucial buffers shielding banks from catastrophes, rooted in centuries of financial evolution from Alexander Hamilton up through the New Deal regulatory regime and modern international agreements like the Basel Accords. But current regulators’ efforts to raise the capital ratios of big banks to safe levels are strongly opposed by most financiers, sparking debates on finding a balance between stability and financial risk, all amid intense political pressures. Read Article
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Lawrence H. Summers and Sir Angus Deaton on Is Economic Failure an Economics Failure? |
Markus Academy
Lawrence H. Summers & Sir Angus Deaton joined Markus’ Academy for a conversation on Is Economic Failure an Economics Failure. Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past three decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank. Sir Angus Deaton is a Senior Scholar and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University. Introductory remarks by Markus Brunnermeier. See Video Debate
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DOJ, FTC Detail Aggressive Antitrust Enforcement |
CFO.com – Vincent Ryan, Senior Reporter-at-Large
The final 2023 merger guidelines address “the ways in which unlawful, anticompetitive practices manifest
The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission released the final version of their new merger guidelines for determining whether corporate combinations are anti-competitive and should be blocked by the federal government.
While the guidelines are not binding, they are designed to inform agency staff, plaintiffs, and the courts of the agencies’ approach toward mergers that dampen competition in the modern economy. Additionally, the guidelines detail how federal agencies will evaluate proposed mergers under federal law. Read Article
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How GM’s $10-Billion Buyback May Ice Its EV Transition |
Institute for New Economic Thinking – By Matt Hopkins and William Lazonick
Reindustrialization vs Financialization – GM’s $10-billion roadblock
The UAW strike against GM, which began on September 14, concluded six weeks later with UAW workers securing a long overdue boost to their wages and benefits that were cut prior to and during GM’s bankruptcy in 2009. Importantly, the UAW won the right to extend its master agreement to UAW members employed in GM’s EV battery production.
During the negotiations, GM’s CEO Mary Barra warned that the financial damage caused by the strike would threaten the company’s ability to invest in its EV transition, telling workers: “make no mistake: If we don’t continue to invest, we will lose ground, and it will happen fast … Nobody wins in a strike.”
In 2021, GM had announced an increase to $35 billion in projected costs for its EV transition from 2020 to 2025. Since 2018, when the company began to execute the transition, through Q3 2023, GM raked in $57.2 billion in net income, a large proportion of which comes from sales of its gas-guzzling, high-margin trucks, SUVs, and crossover vehicles. The profits from GM’s internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles could be committed to funding the company’s EV transition. Instead, GM has been using its cash flow to give multibillion-dollar manipulative boosts to its stock price.
Notwithstanding Barra’s warning to GM’s workers about jeopardizing the EV transition, on November 29, the company announced that it was doing a $10-billion stock buyback in the form of an accelerated share repurchase (ASR). Given the market price of GM’s stock on November 29, the $10-billion ASR is equal to about 25% of the company’s shares outstanding.
An ASR differs from an ordinary stock buyback program by enabling the company to reduce shares outstanding by the full value of the authorized buybacks (in this case, $10 billion) on the date of the announcement. In contrast, an ordinary stock buyback program entails open market repurchases carried out periodically at management’s discretion over the life of the program. An ASR, therefore, gives an “accelerated” boost to earnings per share. Read Article
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Economic Books for Our Time |
Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Videocast featuring Author Angus Deaton
Economics Nobel laureate Sir Angus Deaton discusses his latest book, Economics in America, which takes an autobiographical approach to how the field of economics addresses the most pressing issues of our time—from poverty, retirement, and the minimum wage to the ravages of the nation’s uniquely disastrous health care system. See Video
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The Ghost Budget: Paying for America’s Post 9/11 Wars |
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Videocast featuring Authoru Lina Bilmes
Harvard Kennedy School’s Budgeting and Public Finance expert Professor Linda Bilmes explains the unprecedented shift in how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were financed, contrasting sharply with historical norms. From reliance on debt to the minimal oversight of emergency spending, discover how these critical decisions shaped the nation’s economic landscape and potentially prolonged conflicts.
Professor Linda Bilmes is an expert on budgeting and public finance. She is a full-time faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former Assistant Secretary and Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of Commerce. See Video
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Mexico, Latin America, South America and the Caribbean |
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Trade and Integration Monitor 2023: What’s next: Boosting Competitiveness to Meet Food Security and Climate Change Demands |
InterAmerican Development Bank
The 2023 Trade and Integration Monitor examines how Latin America and the Caribbean is evolving in the new global context. It compares the region to the rest of the world, analyzing trade performance by country and integration bloc. In particular, the report explores the new opportunities arising from growing concerns about food security and environmental sustainability. This is the 11th annual report published by the Integration and Trade Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank to study Latin America and the Caribbeans changing position in the global trading system. Download Report
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IDB Invest Boosts Argentina’s Lithium Production to Promote Green Energy Transition in Latin America and the Caribbean |
InterAmerican Development Bank
IDB Invest will provide a long-term loan of up to $50 million to Allkem, a world-class lithium producer, through capital investments of Sal de Vida, a large and transformational greenfield lithium project in the province of Catamarca, in Argentina. The project will promote low-carbon and climate-resilient private sector development in the country.
The project is expected to produce 15,000 metric tons per year, which represents half of Argentina’s lithium production in 2022, through the construction and operation of Sal de Vida a battery-grade brine lithium plant. It will also generate around 1,000 temporary jobs during the construction phase and more than 400 high-productivity and skilled labor permanent jobs, 20% of which will be filled by women and ahead of the sector’s average. Read Release
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Canada, Europe and Great Britain |
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Institute for New Economic Thinking – Servaas Storm
Why did so many Dutch voters vote for the far-right Geert Wilders?
The shock victory of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Dutch general election of November 22 (2023) is sending tremors across the European Union. The PVV, led by 60-years-old Geert Wilders, who is known for his aggressive anti-Islam, anti-immigration, and anti-EU rhetoric, has suddenly become the biggest political party in the Netherlands, winning 37 seats of the 150 seats in the Dutch lower house (or 23.5% of the votes). This was the sixth general election in which Wilders’s PVV participated, and the veteran politician (who has been a member of parliament since 1998) is now closer to power than ever before. As the leader of the largest party, he will take the lead in forming (and possibly then leading) a coalition government. If this happens, it would signify a normalization of far-right politics in the Netherlands likely to influence political developments far beyond the country. Read Article
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Does Germany Need to Rethink Globalization? |
Deutsche Welle– Timothy Rooks Berlin
The current interconnected global economic system just isn’t working, some economists say. They are calling for a recalculation of globalization, and what it means to be wealthy, independent, and secure.
Globalization has had a rough time lately. Worldwide, just-in-time supply chains suffered under stiff tariffs. COVID-19 shutdowns and travel restrictions caused further distress. Now, the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russian companies are making matters even worse. Inflation and price increases have made energy and food more expensive. Ordinary customers, especially the poor, are suffering.
Is the world order falling apart? Is the status quo even worth saving? The world is changing, and our understanding of globalization must change, too, according to Moritz Schularick, president of Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy.
The focus of globalization can no longer be on squeezing the greatest possible profit from global value chains. It must also take into account “their reliability and their political implications,” he wrote in a publication accompanying a discussion organized by the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation (BKHS). “It will be a new world economic order compared to what we have been used to for the last 30 years, and it will challenge us.” Read Article
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Hong Kong’s Universities Shrivel in Beijing’s Grip |
BBC World Service, Hong Kong – Grace Tsoi
The Chinese University of Hong Kong at the height of the 2019 protests, symbolised by the umbrella
“There is no ‘red line’,” in Hong Kong any more, says a 30-something humanities professor in the city.
“If they want to come after you, everything can be used as an excuse.” He did not wish to reveal his name because of the repercussions that could follow.
He says his nightmare is being named and attacked by Beijing-backed media, which could cost him his job, or worse, his freedom. That fear has swept through Hong Kong’s universities and academic circles, which once attracted top talent. The city was close to the mainland, yet far enough to host progressive classrooms, world-class libraries and archives that allowed academic freedom, even in Chinese studies. Read Article
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Indonesia Asks Military to Help Farmers Plant Rice |
BBC News – Lipika Pelham
Indonesia’s president has ordered the military to help farmers plant rice, as severe drought fuelled by the El Niño weather phenomenon threatens yields.
Joko Widodo told army officers to take advantage of recent rainfall in some provinces and help with the planting effort.
Prolonged drought has reduced output of the staple crop in South East Asia’s most populous country.
High prices have increased imports and threatened food security. Read Article
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China Warns Philippines Over South China Sea Dispute |
DeutscheWelle
China has warned the Philippines that it “must act with caution” after the recent series of disputes in the South China Sea, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry said.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has asked the Philippines to resort to dialogue to address what China views as “serious difficulties” in their relations over the South China Sea.
The statement from China comes as incidents of scuffles between vessels from the two countries have escalated in the past few months. Read Article
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Asia, India and Australia |
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The Voice: Australians Vote No in Historic Referendum |
BBC News, Sydney - Hannah Ritchie
Australia has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum.
All six states voted No to a proposal to amend the constitution to ecognize First Nations people and create a body for them to advise the government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said defeat was hard: “When you aim high, sometimes you fall short. We understand and respect that we have.”
Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the result was “good for our country”. Read Article
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What Now for Kashmir After Indian Court Ruling? |
Deutsche Welle - Samaan Lateef Srinagar, Kashmir | Murali Krishnan New Delhi
A pall of uncertainty hangs over the headquarters of Kashmir's oldest and largest political party, the National Conference, a day after India's Supreme Court supported the 2019 decision by the government that fundamentally transformed constitutional guarantees related to citizenship, land ownership, and employment in the region.
In a unanimous ruling, the five-member bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2019 had not overreached its power in withdrawing Kashmir's special status, known as Article 370, calling it a "temporary provision." Read Article
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Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia |
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Forging African-Caribbean Trade |
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH – International Trade Centre
Trade between Africa and the Caribbean could be worth an additional $1 billion, with the right support. Much of that potential lies in agri-business, which was the focus at the AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum in Guyana.
Known as ACTIF, the first forum last year released a report on Expanding African-Caribbean Trade.
Since then, Afreximbank has opened a Caribbean Office in Barbados, and is launching a pilot project to ease payments within the Caribbean, said Afreximbank Chairman Benedict Oramah.
‘By the conclusion of 2024, Afreximbank will embark on establishing the Africa Trade Centre in Barbados, as the permanent location for its Caribbean office. This centre will encompass a hotel, trade information, conferencing, and exhibition facilities,’ he said in his opening remarks. Read Release
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Africa’s Crisis Is Also an Opportunity |
Institute for New Economic Thinking - Camilla Toulmin and Folashadé Soulé
“If we get our policy, politics, and institutions right, African economies and society could gain greater energy and food security, built on green competition and taking strong action on climate change.“ —Professor Chuks Okereke, Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Development at Alex Ekwueme Federal University
Professor Chuks Okereke, Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Development at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ebony State, Nigeria, argues that crisis offers African leaders a moment for deep thinking, which could lead to transformational change. But old politics, and short-term problem-solving are getting in the way of achieving such changes.
We’ve been facing a poly-crisis caused by one disruption after another – COVID, climate, conflict, debt… Can you see something positive in this, in terms of reframing the choices open to African countries, forcing them to say hey – this isn’t working, we have to do things differently? How do you see the global picture, and the choices facing African countries where you’ve been working, especially Nigeria?
It’s a great question. I have often heard people say that the worst thing you should do with a big crisis is to waste it. Crisis can offer opportunity for reflection, for deep thinking, for transformational change. But it is not a given that a crisis does in fact bring these rewards. Read Article
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Proactive Technologies' Project Partners |
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Frank J. Gibson Consulting |
"One thing is certain... nothing is certain!"
The rate of change affecting work, the worker, management and the educational institutions that service all three has been accelerating - made worse by the unexpected Covid-19 pandemic. The economy, the consumer, supply chains and operational strategies have all been disrupted in the short-term, casting doubt on the long-term.
Rapid adaptation is the key to survivability, sustainability and growth. Sometimes an experienced outside advisor can help facilitate needed improvements to take the worry out of change and the fear out of growth. Frank J. Gibson Management and Workforce Excellence Advisor
- Business Development & Growth
- Workforce Development and Optimization
- Training and Cross-Training
- Local,/Regional Workforce Development Projects and Community Development
- Facilitated Problem Solving
- Process Improvement Cross-Functional Leadership Coaching and Mentoring
- Internship and Apprenticeship Projects
- Strategic Doing/Strategic Planning
Copyright © 2024 Frank J. Gibson
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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PTI Systems®
International, Inc.
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Affiliated with Proactive Technologies, Inc®. for projects outside the United States;
- Workforce development partner for employers, and education/ training providers who support employers, to ensure every worker can be trained to full job mastery;
- Experienced with governmental, IDB, GIZ and economic development agency sponsored projects;
- Experienced in assuring multinational employers expanding to the U.S. have the skilled workforce they need.
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PTI Systems® International sets-up complete worker development and performance management systems, and provides technical implementation support;
- We provide strategies for our project's transition to local management.
- Speakers for seminars and conferences.
Don't complain about a "skills gap," deliberately develop every worker to full job mastery!
© 2018-24 PTI Systems® International, Inc.™
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“Performance of management should be measured by potential to stay in business, to protect investment, to ensure future dividends and jobs through improvement of product and service for the future, not by the quarterly dividend.”
American engineer, statistician,
professor, author, lecturer, and
management consultant
1900 - 1993
"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution."
American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, Founding Father/2nd president of U.S.
1735 – 1826
“The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.”
Ancient Chinese Taoist philosopher
6th-5th Century BC
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U.S. Department of Commerce - Bureau of Economic Analysis |
U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services
The U.S. monthly international trade deficit increased in October 2023 according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. Census Bureau. The deficit increased from $61.2 billion in September (revised) to $64.3 billion in October as exports decreased and imports increased. The goods deficit increased $3.5 billion in October to $89.8 billion. The services surplus increased $0.4 billion in October to $25.5 billion. Read Report
U.S. International Transactions, 3rd Quarter 2023
The U.S. current-account deficit narrowed by $16.5 billion, or 7.6 percent, to $200.3 billion in the third quarter of 2023, according to statistics released today by BEA. The revised second-quarter deficit was $216.8 billion. The third-quarter deficit was 2.9 percent of current-dollar gross domestic product, down from 3.2 percent in the second quarter. Read Report
New Foreign Direct Investment in the United States
The statistics on new foreign direct investment in the United States provide information on the acquisition, establishment, and expansion of U.S. business enterprises by foreign direct investors. Read Reports
BEA International Trade and Investment Country Facts
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U.S. Department of Commerce - Bureau of the Census |
Monthly Wholesale Trade
October 2023 sales of merchant wholesalers were $667.9 billion, down 1.3 percent (+/- 0.5 percent) from last month. End-of-month inventories were $897.1 billion, down 0.4 percent (+/- 0.4 percent)* from last month. October 2023: -0.4* % Change in Inventories; September 2023 I: 0.0* % Change in Inventories. Read Report
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INTEGRA, the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) new platform specializing in integration, trade and investment data from Latin America and the Caribbean.
INTEGRA offers:
Data Consultation and Visualization: Access to constantly updated data, with the ability to customize searches.
Professional Support: Tools designed to support professionals in the public and private sectors, academia, and other fields, facilitating research, analysis, and decision-making processes. This enhances strategic planning regarding integration and trade.
You will be able to delve into:
Trade in goods and services: Recent estimates of the region’s total trade, including the evolution of exports, imports, and trade balance; trade analysis by partner, product, and categories; and data segmented by customs and transportation.
Capital movement: Detailed insights into Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), both total and by sectors and partners.
Regulations: A comprehensive map of trade and integration agreements, preferential market access, tariff reduction schedule of the Mercosur-EU agreement, and non-tariff measures.
Indicators: Prices and volumes of exports and imports, commodity price index, main indicators of goods and services. Country profile: A summary of the primary platform data for IDB borrowing countries. Access INTEGRA
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Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development |
U.S. Data versus the World
Find, compare and share the latest OECD data: charts, maps, tables and related publications. Access Data
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International Trade in Services
Trade in services records the value of services exchanged between residents and non-residents of an economy, including services provided through foreign affiliates established abroad. This indicator is measured in million USD and percentage of GDP for exports, imports and net trade. Services include transport (both freight and passengers), travel, communications services (postal, telephone, satellite, etc.), construction services, insurance and financial services, computer and information services, royalties and license fees, other business services (merchanting, operational leasing, technical and professional services, etc.), cultural and recreational services, and government services not included in the list above. Trade in services drives the exchange of ideas, know-how and technology, although it is often restricted by barriers such as domestic regulations. All OECD countries compile their data according to the 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA). Access Data and Tables
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October Trade Deficit Up 5% As EU, Mexico Goods Gap Breaks 2022 Levels |
Coalition for a Prosperous America
The U.S. is shifting supply chains out of China and that is becoming increasingly evident by the decline in the goods deficit with the world’s No. 2 economy, based on the latest Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) trade figures, released on Wednesday. A lot of the action is now shifting to Europe and Mexico, where supply chains there have led to a bigger goods gap with the U.S. so far this year than last year.
All told, the goods and services trade deficit rose 5.1% to $64.3 billion in October, with the year-to-date goods and services deficit falling 19.8% to $654.6 billion. The decline compared to 2022 is mainly due to imports falling 4%. This could be due to a combination of factors – from warehouses still full from the pandemic years, and costlier credit.
As always, the goods deficit paints a different story. The goods deficit for October was $89.6 billion, bringing the Jan-Oct total to $893.8 billion on Census basis. While the goods deficit is less than the 10-month total of $1 trillion last year, it is higher than the 2021 number of $873.5 billion and will likely end the year at $1.06 trillion. If so, it will not be a record, but will continue the trend of trillion dollar goods deficits between the U.S. and the world. Read Article
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Government Incentives, Geopolitical Disruptions Propel Record-Breaking Reshoring, FDI Job Announcements: Report |
IndustryWeek – Anna Smith
During the first half of 2023, 78% of job announcements were in the South and Midwest, according to the Reshoring Initiative.
Reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) cases have led to over 182,000 job announcement in the first half of this year, according to the Reshoring Initiative 1H 2023 Report. Reshoring accounted for 59% of these jobs, while FDI contributed 41%. The Reshoring Initiative anticipates over 300,000 total jobs announced by the end of 2023.
The report projects that the electrical equipment, appliances & components, and computer & electronic products industries will be responsible for 64% of total jobs announced in 2023, pushed by EV battery and semiconductor investments. Since 2010, close to 2 million manufacturing jobs are expected to have been brought back to the U.S. by the end of 2023. Read Article
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Investments In China: NC’s Patrick McHenry Is Out Of Step On This Issue |
Coalition for a Prosperous America – Dan DiMicco, former CEO of Nucor Corp. in Charlotte and co-founder and vice chair of Coalition for a Prosperous America.
It’s hard to find much that Americans agree on these days. And yet, in poll after poll, voters unite on one issue — China. Across the political spectrum, Americans believe China poses a serious economic and military threat to the United States. They’re right to worry since Beijing has aligned itself with Russia and Iran, continues to hack U.S companies, and is threatening Taiwan.
It should be a no-brainer then to make sure that America’s investors don’t fund any of China’s military ambitions. And yet our very own Congressman, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, is inexplicably blocking bipartisan congressional efforts to limit U.S. investments in China.
It would be great if we could wave a magic wand and make sure that not one dime of Wall Street money goes to Beijing. But capital markets are a huge arena, and it’s difficult to police the literally trillions of dollars flowing around the globe each day. Read Article
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Nippon Steel Wins U.S. Steel Auction With Bid of Nearly $15 Billion |
IndustryWeek – Geert De Lombaerde
USW leaders decry the proposed sale and say they will push regulators to scrutinize the deal’s labor and national security implications.
The four-month auction of U.S. Steel Corp. has yielded a surprise winner in Nippon Steel Corp., which has agreed to pay $14.1 billion in cash for the shares of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel.
The directors of Tokyo-based Nippon Steel have approved a plan to pay $55 per share for U.S. Steel, which is about 40% higher than where the stock closed Friday. It also is nearly 60% more than the $35-per-share offer made in late July by Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., a move that U.S. Steel’s leaders rejected and responded to by putting the historic manufacturer on the market.
When completed as planned by the middle of the next year, the deal will grow Nippon Steel’s production capacity by 20 million tons annually to about 86 million tons. Speaking on a conference call with analysts, Executive Vice President Takahiro Mori said his team’s goal is to grow that number to 100 million tons. Read Article
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Corporate America A Huge Stumbling Block For China Policy, Hudson Institute Panel Agrees |
Coalition for a Prosperous America – Kenneth Rapoza
Corporate America got called on the carpet for its stand-down approach to China in a one-hour panel discussion at the Hudson Institute on Monday.
The visual used to describe what has become a two-against-one battle over China policy was the $40,000 ticket to sit at Xi Jinping’s dinner table at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco last month during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. It was there that A-list CEOs such as Tim Cook of Apple, wholly reliant on China to make iPhones, gave Xi numerous standing ovations. In the battle against China, it is Washington in one corner and China in the other, accompanied by a well-built, oiled-up and suntanned Corporate America by its side. Read Article
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Education And Workforce Development News |
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Employers, Educators are Filling in Gen Z’s Etiquette Gap |
HR Dive – Caroline Colvin, Reporter
Studies indicate that employers might be the new “post-secondary colleges.”
Regarding generational differences in workplace etiquette, one early talent expert summed it up neatly: “Clear is kind,” she told HR Dive.
A firm grasp on tech skills has been key to the success of recent college graduates across industries since the 2010s. Understandably, artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, is at the forefront of modern-day learning and development conversations.
But for incoming workers, including the class of 2024, L&D may be more than a way to brush up “hard” skills. Employer-offered L&D can lay the foundation for workplace skills overall.
A report from digital education platform edX suggested that 80% of workers see employers as post-secondary learning institutions. Read Article
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Nearly Half of Companies Say They Plan to Eliminate Bachelor’s Degree Requirements in 2024 |
HR Dive – Carolyn Crist
Many employers are dropping degree requirements to create a more diverse workforce and increase job candidate numbers, survey results show.
Forty-five percent of companies plan to eliminate bachelor’s degree requirements for some positions in 2024, according to a Nov. 29 report from Intelligent.com.
In 2023, 55% of companies removed degree requirements, particularly for entry-level and mid-level roles, the survey shows. Employers said they dropped these requirements to create a more diverse workforce, increase the number of applicants for open positions and because there are other ways to gain skills.
“Due to the expense of attending college, earning a bachelor’s degree is generally more difficult for people from traditionally marginalized groups and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds,” Diane Gayeski, higher education advisor for Intelligent.com and professor of strategic communication at Ithaca College, said in a statement. Read Article
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L&D’s Engagement Paradox: Employees Say They Want Training, Yet Multitask During It |
HR Dive – Carolyn Crist
“Human things are happening while people learn and that’s okay,” according to one L&D pro.
Employees continue to voice strong demand for training opportunities, yet a majority of workers responding to a recent survey said they tend to multitask while learning.
That would seem to indicate an “engagement paradox” when it comes to training, according to a Dec. 6 report from TalentLMS and Vyond. Most survey respondents said the training their company offers keeps them engaged from start to finish. But that doesn’t stop them from checking notifications and replying to emails during online sessions. Read Article
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DOL Rule Would Promote Apprenticeships, Tighten Program Labor Standards |
HR Dive - Kathryn Moody, Senior Editor
Apprenticeships have received much attention of late as a way to funnel badly needed talent into key industries.
Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Labor proposed a rule Dec. 14 that seeks to modernize the registered apprenticeship program. The rule intends to strengthen labor standards and worker protections as well as better promote apprenticeship pathways, among other things.
- The rule also includes a program called the “registered career and technical education apprenticeship” that is designed to make it “more seamless” for full-time high school and community college students to enroll in the apprenticeship system.
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“Equity and job quality have marked the most successful Registered Apprenticeship programs for workers and employers alike. This proposed rule codifies the Department of Labor’s strong commitment to these principles,” Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said in a statement. “Importantly, the proposed changes will also provide strong worker protections, improved employer experiences and greater clarity about the roles of federal and state governments and their partners in the National Apprenticeship System.” Read Article
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Training And Organizational Development News |
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Babe, Those Exclamation Marks in Emails Don’t Pass the Vibe Check! |
HR Dive – Ginger Christ, Reporter
What do you find most aggravating in work emails?
When workers spend roughly 15% of their time handling emails, as Microsoft estimated in its 2023 annual report on work trends, there’s bound to be some annoyance.
I’m as guilty as anyone in filling my emails with a few too many exclamation marks.
However, lucky for me, a recent survey by EmailTooltester found overuse of exclamation marks is only the fifth most annoying thing people can do in emails. Office workers were more annoyed by misspelled names, emojis, pet names (like “babe” or “doll”) and memes. Read Article
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‘Passing the Blame Torch’ Is a CEO Practice That Should Die |
IndustryWeek – Steven L. Blue
A culture of teamwork, not competition, breeds better performance.
I once worked for a CEO that relished in his subordinates competing with each other. Not only that, he would encourage it. He would often pit one against another to see who would come out on top.
Many times, he would direct me to confront one of my peers over something he thought they should or shouldn’t be doing. And he would also direct my peers to do the same thing to me. As you can imagine, these confrontations often turned out badly. For one, they didn’t think I, as a peer, had any business sticking my nose in their business. They were right, even if the CEO directed me to do it. To complicate matters, I wasn’t supposed to tell them the CEO directed me to do it. How crazy is that? Read Article
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When Your Business Is Growing but Your Leadership Culture Is Stagnant |
IndustryWeek – Carl Livesay
Too often, the answer to early success is having everyone work harder and longer.
As businesses transition to the next phase of maturity, their talent requirements change direction. To paraphrase Helen Keller, a bend in the road is only the end if you fail to make the turn.
During a manufacturer’s start-up phase, it is common for leaders to surround themselves with people in their image: Trusted and talented people with superior technical abilities and a strong work ethic.
As business volume increases, the solution is often for the team to work harder and longer. While this approach briefly works, the talent pool is soon fatigued and disenchanted. The result is the manufacturer’s inability to capitalize on success due to workforce constraints and the owner’s inability to scale. Uncorrected, this limits the manufacturers’ ability to expand—and worse, it inhibits sustainability. Read Article
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How to Tell If Your Training Program Is Going Off the Rails |
IndustryWeek – Rick Bohan, Ron Jacques
‘Sink or swim’ and ‘training light’ approaches are the fast track to failure.
Every company has a strategic asset that can’t be emulated by any other firm: the knowledge, skills, and talents of its employees. A recent report indicates that senior executives don’t feel that keeping these skills and knowledge up to date is their problem.
Only a third of C-suite executives surveyed felt that it’s their company’s job to prepare employees for future roles. Fewer than a third think that employees should be able to get all the knowledge and skills for the work from their employer. Half indicated that they saw their own firm’s training efforts as a waste of time.
It’s no surprise, then, that fewer than 20% of workers surveyed felt that their company has a strong learning environment. Read Article
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Year in Review: Standout Quotes from IW’s Talent Advisory Board |
IndustryWeek
The IndustryWeek Talent Advisory Board comprises experts in a variety of leadership positions in manufacturing. Each month, we ask the panel a new question about career advice, work-life balance, the state of manufacturing or anything in between.
In this slideshow, we have compiled some of the most memorable responses we have received this past year, along with the question that prompted the response. See Slideshow
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Access Proactive Technologies' Recent "Proactive Technologies Workforce News" Article Quicklinks |
Located on the left panel below, this includes articles on structured worker development, achieving worker "full job mastery," engineering/quality/safety compliance, ISO/TS/AS quality program support and compliance, and many other contemporary worker development and management topics. |
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Recent Proactive Technologies News Article Quicklinks |
December
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
November
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations - Eastern U.S. - Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. Staff
October
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations - Eastern U.S. - Proactive Technologies, Inc.
Proactive Technologies, Inc. - Staff
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
September
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations – Eastern U.S. – Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff
by Proactive Technologies, Inc. – Staff
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
August
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Stacey Lett, Director of Operations - Eastern U.S. - Proactive Technologies, Inc.
by Frank Gibson, Workforce Development Advisor, retired from The Ohio State University – Alber Enterprise Center
by Dean Prigelmeier, President of Proactive Technologies, Inc.
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Proactive Technologies, Inc.® Partners With Educational Institutions, Workforce/Economic
Development Groups, Government Agencies
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Structured on-the-job training attracts and engages employers in workforce development partnerships...some projects sustainable for more than 18 years!
This creates a steady need for your related technical instruction, services and a pathway for employment.
These partnerships:
- enhance your institution's opportunity to market your products and services to incumbent workers;
- allow your organization to include structured on-the-job training as a capstone to preemployment preparation;
- document a trainee-to worker's increasing value to the employer - the key to retention - rather than leaving it to chance;
- properly aligns workforce development resources and maximizes the impact and results; allows you to engage an employer's facility, equipment and staff in the training process;
- provides the best, sustainable infrastructure for apprenticeships and internships that last!
- is a win for the trainee, win for the worker, win for the employer, win for the institution and win for the community!
This approach has continued to prove itself since 1988, and does not compete with your school's or agency's products and services; it adds to your efforts the clear, tangible, measurable advantage that employers seek.
Proactive Technologies has continued to partner with community colleges, universities, workforce development agencies and training providers with its " hybrid approach" to worker training. Introduce the power of the PROTECH® system of managed human resource development to your clients!
Copyright © 2015 - 2024
Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Tri-Rivers Career Center - Adult Education provides lifelong, continuous learning for a diverse adult population. We utilize practical skills with an eye toward technological advancement.
We partner with state agencies and employers to provide targeted skill development to future and incumbent workers.
Our RAMTEC (Robotic and Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative) facility - one of many throughout the state - offers advanced technical training in specialized areas such as robotics, robotic welding, and engineering technology.
Copyright © 2022 Tri-Rivers Career Center - Adult Education - RAMTEC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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PROACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.® CLIENT SERVICES
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To supplement onsite PROTECH® system of managed human resource development classes, these regularly scheduled webinars are available to the registered staff of clients:
- Structured On-The-Job Training Instructor Certification
- Structured On-The Job Training Checklist Administrator Certification
- Management Structured On-The-Job Training Project Support Briefing
- Integrating Support for Plant-Wide ISO/AS/IATF Quality and Safety Systems with PROTECH Workforce Development System
- Supporting "Pay-For-Value" Systems
- Promoting Continuous Process Improvement While Implementing the PROTECH System for the Accelerated Transfer of Expertise™
- PROTECH Onsite Lead Trainer and System Administrator Certification
Contact US t o attend one of these seminars and we will send you an e-reservation. Include your client ID, name and user ID number and which webinar you would like to attend.
Copyright © 2019-24
Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Tackling Resistance When You’re the New Lean Leader |
IndustryWeek – Dan Burgos
Struggling to get buy-in so you can start building continuous-improvement culture? Here’s a roadmap.
Even though lean tools and principles have been around for over 40 years, thousands of manufacturing organizations have not yet embraced them.
For purposes of this article, I’m going to call these organizations “traditional manufacturers.” They tend to fit these criteria:
- Decisions are made from intuition, rather than facts and data.
- There are no set standards for many processes.
- Shop-floor organization is non-existent.
- Leaders do not practice continuous improvement or problem-solving, tactical or strategic.
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Operational and/or financial results are mediocre or below their potential. Read Article
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Quality 4.0: Learning Quality Control, the Evolution of Statistical Quality Control |
Quality Magazine – Carlos A. Escobar, Ruben Morales, Jose A. Cantoral
Learning quality control (LQC) is a process monitoring system based on machine learning and deep learning.
Quality 4.0 is the next natural step in the evolution of quality. It is based on a new paradigm that enables smart decisions through empirical learning, empirical knowledge discovery, and real-time data generation, collection, and analysis [0]. As Quality 4.0 matures and different initiatives unfold across manufacturing companies, intractable engineering problems will be solved using the new technologies. Advancing the frontiers of manufacturing science, enabling manufacturing processes to move to the next sigma level, and achieving new levels of productivity is possible. Quality 4.0 is still in a definition phase where different authors have different perspectives on how to apply the new technologies. In this article we present learning quality control, our vision.
Learning quality control (LQC) is a process monitoring system based on machine learning and deep learning; for a full description, theory, implementation strategy, and examples refer to example. QC focuses on real-time defect prediction or detection. Read Article
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Tesla Recalls Over 2 Million Vehicles to Fix Defective Autopilot Monitoring System |
NPR – The Associated Press, David Zalubowski
DETROIT — Tesla is recalling more than 2 million vehicles across its model lineup to fix a defective system that’s supposed to ensure drivers are paying attention when they use Autopilot.
Documents posted Wednesday by by U.S. safety regulators say the company will send out a software update to fix the problems.
The recall comes after a two-year investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration into a series of crashes that happened while the Autopilot partially automated driving system was in use. Some were deadly. Read Article
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Toyota Recalls 1 Million Vehicles for Defect That May Prevent Air Bags from Deploying |
NPR - The Associated Press
Toyota Motor Co. said Wednesday it is recalling 1 million vehicles over a defect that could cause airbags not to deploy, increasing the risk of injury.
The recall covers a range of Toyota and Lexus vehicles with model years from 2020 to 2022. Included in the recall are Toyota Avalons, Camrys, Highlanders, RAV4s, Siennas and Corollas, plus some hybrids of those models.
The Lexus models in the recall include the ES250 sedan and the RX350 SUV, among others. Read Article
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Honda Recalling 2.6 Million Vehicles for a Fuel Pump Issue |
CNN - Peter Valdes-Dapena
Honda is recalling 2.6 million cars, SUVs, vans and pickups in the United States because the fuel pump could fail. If that happens while driving, the vehicle could suddenly lose power.
Honda recalled more than 620,000 vehicles in 2021 for the same issue. This latest recall includes many new vehicles that were not included in the one two years ago.
Models being recalled include the 2019 and 2020 model year Honda Accord, 2019 Honda Odyssey, 2019 Honda Pilot, 2019 Honda Ridgeline and many other Honda and Acura models. Acura is Honda’s luxury brand. Read Article
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The Salton Sea Has Even More Lithium Than Previously Thought, New Report Finds |
Area Development – Los Angeles Times, Sammy Roth
Want to produce a huge amount of lithium for electric vehicle batteries — and also batteries that keep our homes powered after sundown — without causing the environmental destruction that lithium extraction often entails?
Then the Salton Sea may be your jam.
Companies big and small have been swarming California’s largest lake for years, trying to find a cost-effective way to pull out the lithium dissolved in scorching hot fluid deep beneath the lake’s southern end. Now a new federal analysis suggests even more of the valuable metal is buried down there than we previously understood. Read Article
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South Korea Declares War on Bedbugs After Surge in Reported Cases |
CNN – Yoonjung Seo
South Korea has become the latest country to declare war on bedbugs following a wave of outbreaks, with bathhouses, university dorms, and train stations across the country on high alert.
Thirty suspected or confirmed infestations have been reported since the end of October, prompting the government to announce a four-week campaign aimed at eradicating the bloodsucking pests.
Previously, the country had been practically free of bedbugs following past extermination campaigns, with just nine infestations being reported to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA) since 2014. Read Article
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Do Computers Make Children ‘Dumber, Not Smarter’? |
DeutscheWelle – Fred Schwaller
Computers have a negative influence on children’s development, say 40 researchers petitioning to stop digitization in German schools.
Computers and tablets are an increasingly important part of education in school classrooms. 46.7% of the world’s primary school classrooms have access to computers, according to UN data, with figures as high as 98% in the EU.
Not everyone thinks computers are a benefit in the classroom, though. Ralf Lankau, a professor of media theory at Hochschule Offenbach has said “tablets and laptops do not make children smarter, but dumber” — referring specifically to kids up the age of 10 years.
Lankau is one of 40 academics who have launched a petition through Germany’s “Gesellschaft für Bildung und Wissen” (Society for Education and Knowledge) to express their concerns about the effects of digital technologies on childhood development. Read Article
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A Volcano in Iceland Erupts Weeks After Thousands Were Evacuated From a Nearby Town |
NPR - The Associated Press
GRINDAVIK, Iceland — A volcano has erupted in southwestern Iceland, sending a flash of light into the evening sky and spewing semi-molten rock into the air in a spectacular show of Earth's power in the land known for fire and ice.
The eruption Monday night appears to have occurred about 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) from the town of Grindavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office said. The town near Iceland's main airport was evacuated in November after strong seismic activity damaged homes and raised fears of an imminent eruption. Read Article
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Genetic Engineering Was Meant to Save Chestnut Trees. Then There Was a Mistake. |
The Washington Post - Dino Grandoni
A potential labelling error was the latest in a series of concerns for the American Chestnut Foundation, driving the nonprofit to pull support for a genetically engineered tree meant resurrect an iconic American species.
For nearly a decade, Jared Westbrook has worked on resurrecting the American chestnut, an iconic tree that nearly vanished from the United States a century ago.
The American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit where Westbrook is director of science, has poured years of work into a line of chestnuts genetically engineered to endure a deadly disease infecting them, an effort meant to be one of the best hopes for its survival. Then an October visit to a chestnut field in Indiana delivered a blow to that vision.
Looking out at the modified trees, Westbrook knew something wasn’t right. He saw one tall tree next to one shorter than normal. Another tall, another short. It meant some may not be able to compete for sunlight if placed in the wild. Read and Hear Article
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Cyber Security And IT News |
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Staples Hit by Cyberattack During Critical Cyber Week Sales Push |
Cybersecurity Dive – David Jones, Reporter
The office supply retailer expects to fully catch up on back orders after online processing and deliveries were briefly disrupted.
Dive Brief:
- Staples said a cyber incident starting Monday disrupted its ability to process and deliver online orders via Staples.com. The attack also impacted communications and customer service, the company said in a statement posted on its website.
- After extensive testing, the company was able to get numerous systems back online by Wednesday and restored other systems by Thursday, a spokesperson said via email, adding that the company’s fulfillment supply chain is operating normally.
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Staples expects to get caught up on all November orders by Friday evening, the spokesperson added. Staples retail stores continue to operate normally. Read Article
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Ransomware Attack Causes Outages at 60 Credit Unions, Federal Agency Says |
CNN – Sean Lyngaas
About 60 credit unions in the US are experiencing outages because of a ransomware attack on an IT provider the credit unions use, a federal agency said Friday.
The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the agency that insures deposits at federally insured credit unions, said in a statement to CNN that it was “coordinating with affected credit unions” in the wake of the hack.
The full extent of the outage and its impact on credit unions was unclear Friday evening. One of the affected credit unions, New York-based Mountain Valley Federal Credit Union, said that technicians from the hacked IT provider were “working around the clock to get our systems” back online. Read Article
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Watch Out, There’s a New Malvertising Scheme Spreading Dangerous Ransomware |
Tech Radar – Sead Fadilpašić
Hackers are adopting CACTUS ransomware campaigns
Cybercriminals known as Twisted Spider (AKA Storm-0216) were observed using the services of Storm-1044, which infected target endpoints with an initial access trojan called DanaBot. Twisted Spider would then use this access to deploy the CACTUS ransomware.
In a Twitter thread, Microsoft security researchers said Storm-0216 was known for leveraging QakBot’s infrastructure for infections, but since law enforcement dismantled this operation last summer, the group was forced to pivot to a different platform.
“The current Danabot campaign, first observed in November, appears to be using a private version of the info-stealing malware instead of the malware-as-a-service offering,” the company explained. DanaBot offered hands-on keyboard activity to its partners, it was added. Read Article
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Authorities Raise Alarm on Threats Against Water, Other Critical Sectors |
Cybersecurity Dive – David Jones, Reporter
An ongoing cyber campaign against Unitronics PLC devices has impacted multiple U.S. water facilities, but authorities are also monitoring energy, healthcare, and food and beverage manufacturing.
Dive Brief:
- Hackers affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are behind a series of attacks targeting devices used in U.S. water and wastewater facilities, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned in a joint advisory with Israel and other U.S. agencies on Friday.
- The threat group, operating under the name Cyber Av3ngers, is targeting Israeli-made Unitronics Vision Series programmable logic controllers, which are used in water and wastewater plants alongside other sectors, including energy, healthcare and food and beverage manufacturing.
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Authorities said the hackers have compromised devices that use default credentials since at least Nov. 22 with defacing messages and could possibly render them inoperable. At least a half dozen facilities across the U.S. have been impacted, according to a source familiar with the attacks. Read Article
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Dozens of Credit Unions Confront Outages Linked to Third-party Ransomware Attack |
Cybersecurity Dive – Matt Kapko, Senior Reporter
CitrixBleed ensnared another industry, leading to a network incident at Ongoing Operations, which provides business continuity services.
Dive Brief:
- About 60 credit unions are contending with outages due to a ransomware attack against Trellance, a third-party IT vendor for the industry, the National Credit Union Administration said Friday.
- Trellance-owned Ongoing Operations told affected credit unions it was the target of a ransomware attack on Nov. 26, Joseph Adamoli, acting director and media relations manager at NCUA, said in an email. FedComp, another Trellance-owned unit serving credit unions, also reported a nationwide outage.
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Ongoing Operations said the incident is isolated to a segment of its network. “The investigation to determine what impact this incident may have had on information stored on our network systems is ongoing,” the company said in a Friday statement. Read Article
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23andMe Hackers Accessed a Whole Lot of User’s Personal Data |
Tech Radar – Sead Fadilpašić
23andMe filing with the SEC unveils worrying details
Biogenetics company 23andMe has submitted a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) detailing the data breach it suffered in early October 2023.
In the filing, the company said that the threat actors accessed data on 0.1% of its customer base – roughly 14,000 individuals if the company’s recent claim to have “more than 14 million customers worldwide” in a recent annual earnings report is to be believed. Read Article
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Water Utility Cyberattacks Underscore Ongoing Threat to OT |
Cybersecurity Dive – David Jones, Reporter
U.S. officials urged water utilities and industrial sites to employ basic configuration safeguards like securing internet-facing devices and changing default passwords following a series of attacks.
The East Bay Municipal Utility District’s wastewater treatment plant in Oakland, California, as seen in 2008. EBMUD’s main wastewater treatment plant was the first sewage treatment facility in the nation to convert post-consumer food scraps to energy via anaerobic digestion. (2008). Retrieved from Environmental Protection Agency.
The Iran-linked attacks against drinking and wastewater systems in the U.S. highlights longstanding concerns about under-resourced, local companies that depend on operational technology, including small utilities, manufacturers and healthcare organizations.
A group backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is linked to a recent wave of attacks targeting multiple U.S. water facilities and other sites that use Unitronics Vision Series programmable logic controllers. Read Article
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Governments Spying on Apple, Google Users Through Push Notifications – US Senator |
Reuters – Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) – Unidentified governments are surveilling smartphone users via their apps’ push notifications, a U.S. senator warned on Wednesday.
In a letter to the Department of Justice, Senator Ron Wyden said foreign officials were demanding the data from Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Apple (AAPL.O). Although details were sparse, the letter lays out yet another path by which governments can track smartphones.
Apps of all kinds rely on push notifications to alert smartphone users to incoming messages, breaking news, and other updates. These are the audible “dings” or visual indicators users get when they receive an email or their sports team wins a game. What users often do not realize is that almost all such notifications travel over Google and Apple’s servers. Read Article
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2 Years On, Log4j Still Haunts the Security Community |
Cybersecurity Dive – David Jones, Reporter
Research from Veracode shows nearly 2 in 5 applications are still running vulnerable versions.
Dive Brief:
- Two years after the historic disclosure of a critical zero-day vulnerability in the Apache Log4j library sent organizations racing to contain the damage, nearly 2 in 5 applications are still using vulnerable versions, according to a report released Thursday from Veracode.
- The report found nearly one-third of applications are running Log4j2 1.2.x, which reached end-of-life status in August 2015 and no longer receives patch updates. Another 2.8% of applications are still using versions vulnerable to the actual Log4Shell vulnerability.
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Veracode found 3.8% of applications are using Log4j2 2.17.0, which was patched against Log4Shell, but contains CVE-2021-44832, another high severity, remote code execution vulnerability. Read Article
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How Vulnerable Is Your OT Network? |
IndustryWeek – Gene Price
This laggard area of cybersecurity calls for robust internal collaboration between tech and operations.
Operational technology (OT) networks are a primary means of profit for manufacturers of a variety of products, from everyday household items to semiconductors and industrial-scale fabrications. Yet, these networks aren’t just critical for production. They are used in energy transmission, railroads, and other i
After long being neglected, OT network security is suddenly under the spotlight because adversarial countries and criminal consortiums are looking for ways to infiltrate and exploit these systems. Read Article
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Microsoft Targets CAPTCHA-cracking Bot Ring Allegedly Responsible for 750M Fake Accounts |
Geekwire – Todd Bishop
Microsoft secured a court order to sieze and take down websites used by a group that it describes as the “number one seller and creator of fraudulent Microsoft accounts,” which deployed bots capable of tricking the CAPTCHA systems normally used to confirm that humans are creating accounts.
The group, which Microsoft calls Storm-1152, also routinely circumvented the authentication systems of other major technology companies, including Twitter (X) and Google, according to a Microsoft complaint unsealed Wednesday afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Read Article
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Stealthy New Botnet Targets VPN Devices and Routers While Staying Disguised |
Tech Radar – Craig Hale
The US Government, together with several other countries, has issued a joint Cybersecurity Advisory notice warning of malicious work being carried out by a state-sponsored Chinese cyber actor known as Volt Typhoon.
The Chinese group has been observed targeting US critical infrastructure sectors, and other countries are believed to be at risk.
In fact, the attack uncovered by Microsoft earlier this year has captured the attention not only of the NSA, CISA, and FBI of the United States, but also officials in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. Read Article
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Mr. Cooper Cyberattack Hits Every Current — and Former — Customer |
Cybersecurity Dive – Matt Kapko, Senior Reporter
The mortgage servicer expects vendor expenses related to its response and recovery to reach $25 million this quarter. Almost 14.7 million people were impacted.
The personal data on every current and former customer of Mr. Cooper Group — almost 14.7 million people — was stolen during an October cyberattack, the mortgage servicer said Friday.
“Our forensic review has determined that personal information relating to substantially all of our current and former customers was obtained from our systems during this incident,” EVP and CFO Kurt Johnson said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Read Article
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Comcast’s Xfinity Discloses Massive Data Breach Linked to CitrixBleed Vulnerability |
Cybersecurity Dive - David Jones, Reporter
The breach, involving 35.9 million customers, took place just a week after Citrix released a patch for a critical flaw.
Dive Brief:
- Comcast’s Xfinity broadband entertainment platform disclosed a massive data breach involving 35.9 million customers on Monday, an incident connected to the ongoing CitrixBleed vulnerability.
- Xfinity promptly patched the vulnerability in Citrix software it uses in mid-October and took additional mitigation steps, the company said in an announcement. However, during a routine cybersecurity exercise on Oct. 25, Xfinity found an anomaly in its systems and identified a breach between Oct. 16-19 by an unauthorized party.
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After launching an investigation and contacting law enforcement, on Nov. 16 the company determined that customer data was likely stolen. On Dec. 6, Xfinity determined the compromised data included user names and hashed passwords. In some cases, names, contact information, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, dates of birth and secret questions and answers were accessed. Read Article
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Human Resource Management News |
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Brex’s Michael Tannenbaum: The Impact of Job Titles |
CFO.com – Adam Zaki, Reporter
The CFO-turned-COO discusses changing leadership roles and how he embraces the new autonomy and organizational influence.
Job titles have different values at different organizations. Some leaders value job titles greatly, while others couldn’t care less. Some CEOs wear multiple hats, some CFOs do more than just finance, and other executives have titles that don’t fully encompass the tasks they perform daily.
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McDonald’s Asks SCOTUS to Hear No-poach Case |
HR Dive – Ryan Golden, Senior Reporter
A group of former employees sued in 2018, alleging that hiring restrictions between the fast food chain and its franchises constituted a “per se” violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
McDonald’s has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether hiring restrictions between franchise operators under the same brand should be presumed subject to federal antitrust laws, as well as whether courts should ignore the “procompetitive impact” of such restrictions on other markets, according to a petition for writ of certiorari filed Nov. 21.
The fast food chain’s appeal arises from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, which held in August that a lawsuit challenging a no-poach clause included in franchise agreements could proceed. Read Article
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Half of Workers Left Previous Job After Feeling Underappreciated |
HR Dive – Carolyn Crist
Having a salary that was “too low” was a close second, a Monster poll found.
Half of workers decided to give their two weeks’ notice at a previous position because they felt underappreciated, according to a survey on two weeks’ notice submission conducted by Monster in November.
Other reasons given? Their salary was too low (49%), they were burnt out (34%), they experienced a lack of promotion (33%), they wanted to make a career change (32%), the work began to feel boring or draining (27%), they had a lack of flexibility (20%) or they had ongoing conflicts with colleagues (16%). Read Article
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Is An ‘Employee Experience Winter’ Coming? |
HR Dive – Jen A. Miller, Contributor
Companies are “less interested in employee experience in general,” thus making it an easy target for cutting costs or cutting corners, one Forrester expert said.
After investing in improving employee experience during pandemic-driven talent shortages, employers in general are pulling back, which could affect how their employees feel about work — and employers’ bottom lines.
In its “Predictions 2024: The Future of Work” report, Forrester found that employee experience will be taking a back seat in 2024, leading to what they call an “EX winter.”
Companies are “less interested in employee experience in general,” thus making it an easy target for cutting costs or cutting corners, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst on Forrester’s Future of Work team. Strategies that improve engagement, productivity and ultimately growth, are being stepped back. Read Article
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Workers Received Fewer — and Smaller — Raises in 2023, Report Finds |
HR Dive – Emilie Shumway, Editor
While a little more than half of workers described themselves as happy or content with their salary, most could still be tempted away.
Dive Brief:
- Just over 40% of workers haven’t received a salary increase in the past 12 months, according to a survey of 1,500 full-time employees by BambooHR. For those who did get a raise, the average salary increase was 4.6%, compared to 6.2% in 2022.
- Notably, women seem to be significantly less satisfied with their salary; 27% expressed frustration with their compensation, compared to 15% of men.
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While a little over half of workers described themselves as happy or content with their salary, most could still be tempted away. Nearly 3 in 4 would consider leaving for a higher paycheck, but it would take an average increase of 13.3% to get them out the door, BambooHR found. Read Article
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McDonald’s, KFC, Burger King, Wendy’s Franchisees Face ‘Convict Leasing’ Suit in Alabama |
HR Dive - Aneurin Canham-Clyne, Reporter
Incarcerated workers are suing Alabama and employers, including franchisees of major restaurant chains, over an alleged system of coerced labor.
Franchisees of McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King and Wendy’s face a class action lawsuit challenging an Alabama prison labor system as a form of coerced labor and convict leasing, according to court documents filed this week.
According to the suit, filed by incarcerated workers and joined by several labor unions, the state of Alabama received “a labor-trafficking fee equivalent to 40% of the gross earnings paid by the private employers for the forced labor,” creating a fiscal incentive for the state to maximize the number of workers subject to forced labor. Read Article
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Environmental, Health & Safety News |
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Suicide Rates Hit Highest Level Ever in 2022 |
EHS Today – Staff
The rate of suicides per 100,000 increased from 14.1 in 2021 to 14.3 in 2022, the highest since 1941.
A new report from the CDC released on November 29 showed that number of suicides was 3% higher in 2022, increasing from 48,183 in 2021 to 49,449, the highest number ever recorded in the US.
The previous all-time high was 48,344 in 2018.
The rate of suicides per 100,000 increased from 14.1 in 2021 to 14.3 in 2022, the highest since 1941.
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Making Naloxone Part of Emergency Preparedness Plan |
EHS Today – Staff
Almost 1 in 11 workers who die at work die from a drug overdose.
And these deaths have been rapidly increasing for years – 536% since 2011.
The CDC predicts that nearly 110,000 people died from an overdose in 2022. That’s almost 300 people dying each day. Most of these deaths are due to opioids such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, heroin and fentanyl.
To help workplaces create an overdose readiness program, the National Safety Council created Respond Ready Workplace. This program aims to reduce overdose deaths in worksites by supporting the availability of naloxone, related training and support resources in workplaces. Read Article
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New OSHA Reporting Rule Targeting Certain Employers Set to Take Effect |
EHS Today - Andrew Brought
Companies with 100 or more employees in high-risk industries will be required to electronically submit Form 300 Log and OSHA Form 301 Incident Reports.
In an effort to increase transparency of workplace injuries and OSHA’s ability to target employers with specific hazards, effective January 1, 2024, OSHA is requiring business establishments with 100 or more employees in certain designated high-risk industries to electronically submit information from their OSHA Forms 300 and 301 to the agency annually. Touting the public’s ability to utilize this data, OSHA explains that a benefit of the new requirement is the “public access to establishment-specific, case-specific injury and illness data [that] will allow employers, employees, potential employees, employee representatives, customers, potential customers, and the general public to make more informed decisions about workplace safety and health at a given establishment.”
Most employers are generally familiar with the longstanding concept of “recordkeeping” and OSHA “recordables” that a business must record and log for any triggering injuries and illnesses during any given year under OSHA 300, 300A, and 301 recordkeeping requirements. And for the past few years, certain employers have been subject to an annual electronic submission requirement in OSHA’s Injury Tracking Application pursuant to 29 CFR 1904.41 (i.e., (1) if your establishment had 250 or more employees at any time during the previous calendar year; and (2) if your establishment had 20 or more employees but fewer than 250 at any time during the previous calendar year and your establishment is classified in a high-hazard industry listed in Appendix A to 29 CFR Part 1904, Subpart E). Read Article
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The Biggest Challenges for Safety Leaders, Revealed |
EHS Today – Dave Blanchard, Nicole Stempak
A look at what motivates, frustrates and challenges safety professionals.
What slows you down at work? What gets in the way of you being the best-version-of-your-leadership-self? What prevents you from achieving all your goals in any given day?
In other words, what are your biggest challenges as a safety professional?
This past year has been a challenging one, particularly for those whose jobs are to ensure the health and safety of others. And if it seems like the world is just getting more dangerous and confusing with every passing day, it’s not just you—that seems to be one of the after-effects of the pandemic. A lingering sense of “what’s going to happen next?” has become a prevalent mood within the workplace, making it all the harder to keep workers motivated. And yet, for all of the turmoil in the world, safety professionals continue to perform at a high level, inspiring their employees to embrace a culture focused on the health and safety of everyone. Read Article
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Having trouble finding, selecting, training and keeping the skilled workers you need? Are your employee turnover costs a concern?
Let's start with what we already know:
- Classes alone will not train workers to perform your tasks...
- Quality Control policies and Process Documents are not a substitute for task training...
- Putting 2 people together and hoping for the best is not a training strategy...
- Wishing and hoping won't develop the skilled workers you need...
The cost of one worker malperformance or one worker's under-capacity or under-performance - due to lack of proper training - can more than justify the investment to train all your workers properly!
AND, unstructured, uncontrolled, undocumented task training is going on all day, every day. But if you cannot explain the process, you surely cannot measure and improve it.
Proactive Technologies's approach to structured on-the-job training takes place where, and while, the work is performed. You need no additional staff and structured on-the-job training does not interrupt your work schedule like unstructured, haphazard and ad hoc training or classroom learning does.
As part of every project, Proactive Technologies provides the support to set-up, implement, manage, document and revise the worker development system so you can stay focused on business.
Copyright © 2019-24 Proactive Technologies, Inc.® ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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EMPLOYERS!
If your organization sees training as a cost, not as an investment, maybe you should consider another approach!
- Cuts the employer's internal costs of training;
- Lowers the costs associated with turnover;
- Drives new-hires and incumbent workers to "full job mastery;"
- Increases worker capacity, work quality, productivity and compliance (ISO/AS/IATF training and records requirement, engineering specifications and safety mandates);
- Creates framework for cross-training, retraining and worker certification;
- Establishes the framework for employer specific/job-specific apprenticeships and internships - registered or not;
- Builds career development tracks and succession plans for hourly (and salary) workers;
- Ensures the increased and maintained "Return on Worker investment" through any type of change...
ALL OF THIS FROM ONE APPROACH!
This structured on-the-job training is performed where, and while, the work takes place!
You need no additional staff, and this will not disrupt your work schedule or burden your existing staff!
If your firm is partnered with local career and technical educational institutions, use of shared employer's equipment, facilities and paid wages of trainer(s) and trainee(s) are attractive match for potential grant assistance.
for more information.
Copyright © 2019-24 Proactive Technologies, Inc.®
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Copyright © 1988 - 2024 Proactive Technologies, Inc.TM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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