Our Blog

A few days ago the January/February 2012 issue of The Atlantic landed in my mailbox.  What immediately caught my eye was “Making It in America,” the cover feature by Adam Davidson, co-founder and co-host of NPR’s popular Planet Money blog and podcast.

In an article in the January 1, 2012, issue of The New York Times Magazine, entitled “Let’s Start Paying College Athletes,” Op-Ed columnist Joe Nocera builds upon the scathing history of the NCAA recently offered by Taylor Branch in “The Shame of College Sports” in The Atlantic to offer his remedy to right the economic balance---at least as far as college football and basketball players are concerned.

I am a Penn State grad.  Like all people associated worldwide with that institution, I am shocked, saddened, and bewildered by the hideous acts allegedly committed by Jerry Sandusky, a former Penn State football defensive coordinator.  The stain of this case is indelible, and we will be treated to a withering barrage of reports and charges, some of which will be fair and accurate, some unfair and inaccurate, and the rest falling somewhere in between.

Recently, I reviewed the case of Turkia Mullin, the former Economic Development Director of Wayne County, Michigan (including metropolitan Detroit), who received a severance payment from Wayne County when in September she voluntarily left the employment of the county to assume the role of CEO of the local Wayne County Airport Authority.  Her severance ignited a controversy which has yet to abate, and some of the media accounts on the subject have described, with little elucidation, a further $75,000 sum she received from a local nonprofit with which she was also associated.

When Turkia Awada Mullin applied for and received the position of CEO of the Wayne County [Michigan] Airport Authority in August 2011, she was hired at a salary of $250,000.  Even though she left her old employer, the County Executive of Wayne County, Michigan, voluntarily, she also received $200,000 in severance.  But wait, there’s more!

August 4, 2011, saw the entry of a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement between the National Football League and the National Football League Players Association.  This follows a four-month interregnum involving decertification of the NFLPA, a lockout by the NFL, and player antitrust litigation against the NFL before the parties concluded their new relationship.

In Section B of its July 29, 2011, issue, The Chronicle of Higher Education provides the results of its 2011 “Great Colleges to Work For” survey.  Jointly sponsored by The Chronicle and ModernThink LLC, this is the fourth such effort and is apparently inspired by and loosely based upon the Great Place to Work Institute’s well known Fortune magazine “100 Best Companies to Work For” list.

It has been several years since most employers have had reason to assess their salary programs. There have been a number of reports recently that job satisfaction is down from the 2008 level.  According to Gallup, the decline is most severe for young workers.  When they can, many are ready to change jobs.

Five major Detroit-based companies have announced that they will provide incentives for their employees to go home – to the right addresses.  All told, $4 million dollars in incentives/benefits may be available under the “Live Downtown” program to the 16,000 employees of the firms who purchase or rent their residences in designated neighborhoods.

As we lurch toward our national day, if not hour, of reckoning with the federal debt ceiling, Congressional struggles have spawned what may be legislative philosopher’s stones.  One of these is Senate Bill S.1735.IS, with the descriptive title of “Ending Excessive Corporate Deductions for Stock Options Act.”