Barclays Considers Raising Wages For Lowest-Paid Workers Around The World

Barclays is considering guaranteeing a living wage to workers worldwide, as it already does for its employees and contract workers in the U.K., where the bank is headquartered.

At a shareholder meeting in London last week, Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins said he would work with the international labor union UNI Global to consider raising pay for the bank’s lowest-level workers around the world. Barclays has about 132,000 employees operating in 50 countries, but declined to say how many workers would get a raise if such a proposal were enacted.

“We are very proud of our certification as a living wage employer in the U.K.,” Jenkins said at the meeting. “We are willing to get started and to discuss this global initiative with UNI Global Union.”

Barclays started moving toward paying a living wage to workers and contractors in the U.K. as early as 2003, and officially received accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation, a U.K. group that has been pushing companies on the issue, in 2013.

The living wage measure would most directly affect bank tellers, mailroom workers and contract workers who provide the bank with cleaning and security services. In the U.K., the bank pays the thousands of workers it employs in these capacities 9.15 pounds ($14.10) an hour in London and 7.85 pounds ($12.09) an hour in the rest of the country.

The bank has not said yet how it will determine what exactly constitutes a "living wage" in different countries. In the U.K., these amounts are determined annually by a London government agency, which looks at the basic cost of living. Companies are only required to pay the U.K.’s minimum wage of 6.50 pounds an hour, and paying the living wage is voluntary.

“Paying people that work for us a wage that supports a decent standard of living makes good business sense and is in line with our values,” Barclays said in an email statement to The Huffington Post. “Currently, this is a UK-specific commitment but Barclays is aware of international efforts to combat wage inequality in other countries, and we are gathering information on how this can be implemented.”

Barclays' effort to expand its living wage commitment is just the latest sign of an emerging movement to raise pay for low-income workers globally.

“We’re in crisis in the globe with wages being too low,” said Christy Hoffman, the deputy general secretary at UNI Global, which is based in Switzerland. Hoffman cautioned that its discussions with Barclays on the issue are still in their very early days.

Hoffman compared her group’s efforts on a global living wage to the movement in the U.S. for a wage of $15 per hour for fast food employees and other workers. There are currently 10,000 Barclays employees in the U.S., Hoffman said, but it isn’t clear how many would be affected by a possible commitment to a living wage.

UNI Global is not active in the U.S. movement for $15 an hour, but it represents more than 20 million workers worldwide in Africa, Central and South America, Asia and Europe.

Jenkins' comments stand in sharp contrast to last year’s shareholder meeting, when Barclays executives came under fire for what shareholders called excessive pay packages for executives, particularly in light of the bank’s involvement in rate-fixing and other scandals over the past few years.

The higher wages in the U.K. have meant that fewer contractors leave the bank, according to a report sponsored by the company and released in January. Contractors also reported higher levels of “engagement” with their job -- i.e., they’re happier, the report stated.

“Having supported the Living Wage for over 10 years, we know that it can improve productivity, morale and retention rates,” Dominic Johnson, the employee relations director for Barclays, said in the January report. "This is not just an expression of our corporate values or an issue of social impact, but good business sense.”

Other employers that have committed to paying a living wage in the U.K. include KPMG, Burberry, HSBC and Nestle.

In the U.S., the average bank teller makes $12.81 an hour, according to the Labor Department. Pay for bank tellers in the U.S. is so low that nearly one-third of them receive some kind of public assistance, according to a 2014 UNI Global report.

UNI Global's Hoffman said that she hopes Barclays inspires other global financial institutions. "We hope this is a first step with banks," she said.

Big Businesses In Baltimore Told Employees To Stay Home After Riots

Some of Baltimore’s biggest employers closed their offices on Tuesday, following the violence that erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after suffering a spinal injury in police custody.

Johns Hopkins University, which employs more than 21,000 workers in the city, canceled all classes and events on Tuesday and asked all nonessential employees to stay home.

“This is out of an abundance of caution and uncertainty about what conditions will be like today,” Dennis O’Shea, a spokesman for the college, told The Huffington Post.

He said the school had not yet planned any outreach programs for after the unrest subsided, but that some student groups were in the city helping to clean up debris from the riots Monday.

Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health Systems, another top employer, remained open on Tuesday.

"The safety and security of our patients and employees is our priority," Kim Hoppe, a hospital spokeswoman, said in a statement. "We are advising patients to check with their health care provider to verify appointments."

Loyola University Maryland canceled all classes after 2 p.m. on Tuesday. It remains unclear whether the school will open on Wednesday.

"That's not something we know as of yet," Nick Alexopoulos, spokesman for the university, told HuffPost.

Constellation Energy, with its roughly 3,100-strong workforce in Baltimore, asked employees to work from home.

“In an effort to ensure employee safety, Constellation asked its Baltimore-based employees to work remotely,” Christina Pratt, a spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. “We will continue to monitor the situation in the days ahead and stay in regular contact with our employees.”

The city’s two largest financial companies, money manager T. Rowe Price Group and the investment bank Legg Mason, also asked employees to work from home. T. Rowe Price sent employees home early on Monday as violence broke out across the city.

“As always, the safety and security of our associates remains our paramount concern,” said spokesman Edward Giltenan, adding that T. Rowe Price employs 1,262 people at its evacuated downtown Baltimore headquarters. “We have maintained communications with our associates during this time and will continue to do so as circumstances warrant. We will also continue to monitor the situation in consultation with local authorities to determine what additional steps, if any, may need to be taken.”

Bank of America, which maintains a sizable outpost in Baltimore, said it was also focusing on safety.

"We’ve taken appropriate steps to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, which includes closing branches and administrative facilities in the affected area," spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie told HuffPost.

Morgan Stanley also has operations in the city, but a representative did not return calls requesting comment. The University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland did not immediately respond, either.

The rioting Monday in West Baltimore marked the most violent clashes between citizens and police in the United States since the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August.

This story has been updated with statements from Johns Hopkins Hospital and Loyola University.

Troubled For-Profit Corinthian Colleges Shutting Down As Education Department Faces Bill

Corinthian Colleges Inc., once one of the nation's largest chains of for-profit colleges, announced Sunday it is abruptly shutting down after failing to find buyers for its roughly 30 remaining campuses, leaving up to 16,000 students in the lurch and potentially costing the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in forgone federal student loan payments.

"What these students have experienced is unacceptable," Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a blog post Sunday.

The California-based chain at its peak operated more than 120 colleges with more than 110,000 students across North America under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands. Last July, under pressure from the Education Department over a paperwork dispute, the company struck a deal with the Obama administration to sell or close all of its campuses over the following six-month period in order to avoid what the Education Department described as an "immediate closure," or exactly what has happened with the company's Sunday announcement.

The closure is effective Monday. Corinthian students were told in a statement posted on the company's website and via email that the company is trying to make arrangements with other schools that would enable Corinthian students to complete their studies elsewhere. Students with federal student loans who choose not to complete their programs would be eligible for full loan cancellations. Unless the Education Department recoups the money from the financially troubled company, taxpayers would eat the cost.

Corinthian said 28 campuses are closing. The Education Department put the total at 30, which includes two satellite campuses that it counts as separate locations.

"For too many students, Corinthian turned the American dream of higher ed into a nightmare of debt & despair," Rohit Chopra, the federal consumer bureau's top student loan official, wrote Sunday on Twitter.

In recent years, Corinthian has been accused by multiple federal and state authorities of systematically lying about its graduation or job placement rates, misleading potential students into enrolling and forking over tens of thousands of dollars to obtain credentials many critics believe to be of dubious value. The company annually received some $1.4 billion in federal financial aid for its students, according to the Education Department.

Corinthian finalized a deal in February to sell more than 50 of its campuses to one of the Education Department's contracted debt collectors in a transaction that effectively bailed out the company and deprived nearly 40,000 students of the chance to have their federal student loans canceled. The forced sale followed months of alleged delays by the company to turn over sufficient paperwork about its job placement rates to the Education Department.

Last summer, the department had limited Corinthian schools' access to federal financial aid, a move that ultimately set off a chain of events that culminated with Sunday's announcement. The company in a statement blamed federal and state regulators for its abrupt closure.

The surprise announcement that the company will immediately shut down its remaining campuses across five states now puts the Education Department in the exact position it had hoped to avoid. The department, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, had hoped to either broker a sale of the company's remaining campuses -- keeping them open for current students -- or help the company strike agreements with other schools to allow Corinthian students the opportunity to complete their programs.

"We believe that we have attempted to do everything within our power to provide a quality education and an opportunity for a better future for our students," Jack Massimino, Corinthian's chief executive, said in a statement. "Unfortunately the current regulatory environment would not allow us to complete a transaction with several interested parties that would have allowed for a seamless transition for our students. I would like to thank our employees for their selfless dedication and commitment to fulfilling the educational and career goals of all of our students."

The company said it had been in what it described as "advanced negotiations" with several potential buyers for its Heald campuses as well as other schools that would take in some Corinthian students in California wishing to complete their studies. But the company said its efforts were stymied "largely as a result of federal and state regulators seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions on buyers and teach-out partners."

Kamala Harris, California's attorney general, has a pending lawsuit against the company alleging it misled students and investors about its job placement rates. The state of California in 2007 settled a previous investigation into Corinthian after amassing evidence that the company allegedly inflated its job placement rates.

Several state attorneys general and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have sued the company, alleging it lied to potential students. The Education Department meanwhile allowed the company's schools to continue enrolling students and tap taxpayer funds for its bottom line.

Mitchell said Sunday that the Education Department would send its staff "to as many campuses as possible to talk directly with students." The department was in discussions with state community college systems to ensure that Corinthian students could continue their studies, he added, while some students could be eligible for debt forgiveness.

The for-profit college industry has been in consumer advocates' crosshairs for years. Though students at for-profit schools constitute only 13 percent of total enrollment at higher education institutions, they represent nearly half of all loan defaults, according to the Education Department. The Obama administration has been trying to rein in for-profit schools and limit dodgy schools' access to federal financial aid.

Corinthian Colleges spawned a growing movement of so-called "debt strikers" who are refusing to make payments on their federal student loans in protest against the Education Department's treatment of the company and its current and former students. A group of roughly 100 former Corinthian students that calls itself the "Corinthian 100" has been publicly pressuring the department to cancel all debts owed by current and former Corinthian students because of the company's alleged deception related to its job placement and graduation rates.

"We have kept students at the heart of every decision we have made about Corinthian," Mitchell said last month.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in March endorsed the debt strike. The former Corinthian students "have decided that this is predatory lending and they're not going to repay their debts," said Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Duncan has said his department is considering their request. Full debt forgiveness for all current and former Corinthian students would likely cost the Education Department billions of dollars, especially because it's unlikely the department could get the company to cover losses from forgone federal student loan payments.

The federal student loan program has generated tens of billions of dollars in profit in recent years, thanks to the spread between high interest rates paid by student loan borrowers and the relatively low rates paid by the government in financing its annual budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the program will continue to generate billions in annual profits in the coming decade.

Last month, the Education Department accused Corinthian's Heald campuses of misleading students and accreditation agencies about its graduates’ employment rates. The company showed a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program after the department said it found 947 false job placement rates dating back to at least 2010.

The Education Department levied a $29.7 million fine, a ban on enrolling new students, and a requirement that Heald prepare plans for its thousands of students to either graduate or transfer to a new school.

The department has yet to announce the results of its broader investigation into allegations the company's other schools lied about its job placement rates.

Troubled For-Profit Corinthian Colleges Shutting Down As Education Department Faces Bill

Corinthian Colleges Inc., once one of the nation's largest chains of for-profit colleges, announced Sunday it is abruptly shutting down after failing to find buyers for its roughly 30 remaining campuses, leaving up to 16,000 students in the lurch and potentially costing the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in foregone federal student loan payments.

"What these students have experienced is unacceptable," Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a blog post Sunday.

The California-based chain at its peak operated more than 120 colleges with more than 110,000 students across North America under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands. Last July, under pressure from the Education Department over a paperwork dispute, the company struck a deal with the Obama administration to sell or close all of its campuses over the following six-month period in order to avoid what the Education Department described as an "immediate closure," or exactly what has happened with the company's Sunday announcement.

The closure is effective Monday. Corinthian students were told in a statement posted on the company's website and via email that the company is trying to make arrangements with other schools that would enable Corinthian students to complete their studies elsewhere. Students with federal student loans who choose not to complete their programs would be eligible for full loan cancellations. Unless the Education Department recoups the money from the financially troubled company, taxpayers would eat the cost.

Corinthian said 28 campuses are closing. The Education Department put the total at 30, which includes two satellite campuses that it counts as separate locations.

"For too many students, Corinthian turned the American dream of higher ed into a nightmare of debt & despair," Rohit Chopra, the federal consumer bureau's top student loan official, wrote Sunday on Twitter.

In recent years, Corinthian has been accused by multiple federal and state authorities of systematically lying about its graduation or job placement rates, misleading potential students into enrolling and forking over tens of thousands of dollars to obtain credentials many critics believe to be of dubious value. The company annually received some $1.4 billion in federal financial aid for its students, according to the Education Department.

Corinthian finalized a deal in February to sell more than 50 of its campuses to one of the Education Department's contracted debt collectors in a transaction that effectively bailed out the company and deprived nearly 40,000 students of the chance to have their federal student loans canceled. The forced sale followed months of alleged delays by the company to turn over sufficient paperwork about its job placement rates to the Education Department.

Last summer, the department had limited Corinthian schools' access to federal financial aid, a move that ultimately set off a chain of events that culminated with Sunday's announcement. The company in a statement blamed federal and state regulators for its abrupt closure.

The surprise announcement that the company will immediately shut down its remaining campuses across five states now puts the Education Department in the exact position it had hoped to avoid. The department, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, had hoped to either broker a sale of the company's remaining campuses -- keeping them open for current students -- or help the company strike agreements with other schools to allow Corinthian students the opportunity to complete their programs.

"We believe that we have attempted to do everything within our power to provide a quality education and an opportunity for a better future for our students," Jack Massimino, Corinthian's chief executive, said in a statement. "Unfortunately the current regulatory environment would not allow us to complete a transaction with several interested parties that would have allowed for a seamless transition for our students. I would like to thank our employees for their selfless dedication and commitment to fulfilling the educational and career goals of all of our students."

The company said it had been in what it described as "advanced negotiations" with several potential buyers for its Heald campuses as well as other schools that would take in some Corinthian students in California wishing to complete their studies. But the company said its efforts were stymied "largely as a result of federal and state regulators seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions on buyers and teach-out partners."

Kamala Harris, California's attorney general, has a pending lawsuit against the company alleging it misled students and investors about its job placement rates. The state of California in 2007 settled a previous investigation into Corinthian after amassing evidence that the company allegedly inflated its job placement rates.

Several state attorneys general and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have sued the company, alleging it lied to potential students. The Education Department meanwhile allowed the company's schools to continue enrolling students and tap taxpayer funds for its bottom line.

Mitchell said Sunday that the Education Department would send its staff "to as many campuses as possible to talk directly with students." The department was in discussions with state community college systems to ensure that Corinthian students could continue their studies, he added, while some students could be eligible for debt forgiveness.

The for-profit college industry has been in consumer advocates' crosshairs for years. Though students at for-profit schools constitute only 13 percent of total enrollment at higher education institutions, they represent nearly half of all loan defaults, according to the Education Department. The Obama administration has been trying to rein in for-profit schools and limit dodgy schools' access to federal financial aid.

Corinthian Colleges spawned a growing movement of so-called "debt strikers" who are refusing to make payments on their federal student loans in protest against the Education Department's treatment of the company and its current and former students. A group of roughly 100 former Corinthian students that calls itself the "Corinthian 100" has been publicly pressuring the department to cancel all debts owed by current and former Corinthian students because of the company's alleged deception related to its job placement and graduation rates.

"We have kept students at the heart of every decision we have made about Corinthian," Mitchell said last month.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in March endorsed the debt strike. The former Corinthian students "have decided that this is predatory lending and they're not going to repay their debts," said Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Duncan has said his department is considering their request. Full debt forgiveness for all current and former Corinthian students would likely cost the Education Department billions of dollars, especially because it's unlikely the department could get the company to cover losses from forgone federal student loan payments.

The federal student loan program has generated tens of billions of dollars in profit in recent years, thanks to the spread between high interest rates paid by student loan borrowers and the relatively low rates paid by the government in financing its annual budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the program will continue to generate billions in annual profits in the coming decade.

Last month, the Education Department accused Corinthian's Heald campuses of misleading students and accreditation agencies about its graduates’ employment rates. The company showed a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program after the department said it found 947 false job placement rates dating back to at least 2010.

The Education Department levied a $29.7 million fine, a ban on enrolling new students, and a requirement that Heald prepare plans for its thousands of students to either graduate or transfer to a new school.

The department has yet to announce the results of its broader investigation into allegations the company's other schools lied about its job placement rates.

Comcast Calls Off Time Warner Cable Merger

Comcast has scrapped plans to merge with Time Warner Cable in a $45.2 billion deal that would have combined the country’s two largest cable and broadband providers, the companies said Friday.

The move comes two days after the Federal Communication Commission said it planned to oppose the deal, joining lawyers from the Justice Department who felt it would not help consumers. The FCC said it would issue a “hearing designation order” that would prolong the deal, making it more difficult and expensive for Comcast. On Friday, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the merger posed "unacceptable risk to competition and innovation."

"Today, we move on," Comcast chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts said in a statement on Friday. "Of course, we would have liked to bring out great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn't agree, we could walk away."

In a separate statement, Time Warner Cable CEO Robert D. Marcus called his company a "one-of-a-kind asset."

But the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger faced vehement opposition from many who claimed such a deal would stifle competition by creating a monopolistic beast. As it is, Americans have limited options compared to other developed countries for buying cable or Internet. A combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have represented 54 percent of the entire U.S. broadband market.

"The companies' decision to abandon this deal is the best outcome for American consumers," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. "This is a victory not only for the Department of Justice, but also for providers of content and streaming services who work to bring innovative products to consumers across America and around the world."

The dead merger marks a second failure for Comcast in just the past year. The Philadelphia-based behemoth suffered a loss when the FCC adopted open Internet rules that enshrine in law net neutrality -- the principle that broadband providers “cannot block, throttle, or create special ‘fast lanes’” for any Internet content. Comcast vehemently opposed the regulation.

Bloomberg News first reported the end of the deal on Thursday.

This story has been updated with statements from Comcast, Time Warner Cable and the FCC and the Department of Justice. Simon McCormack contributed reporting.

How Raising The Minimum Wage To $15 Changed These Workers' Lives

SEATAC, Wash. -- In late 2013, voters in this airport town outside Seattle narrowly approved a groundbreaking measure setting a minimum wage of $15 per hour for certain workers. When the new law went into effect last year, Sammi Babakrkhil got a whopping 57 percent raise.

A valet attendant and shuttle driver at a parking company called MasterPark, Babakrkhil saw his base wage jump from $9.55 per hour, before tips, up to $15. Having scraped by in America since immigrating from Afghanistan 11 years ago, he suddenly faced the pleasant predicament as his co-workers: What to do with the windfall?

For the overworked father of three, it wasn't a hard question. Babakrkhil decided to quit his other full-time job driving shuttles at a hotel down the road. Though he'd take home less money overall, the pay hike at MasterPark would allow him to work 40 hours a week instead of a brutal 80 -- and to actually spend time with his wife and three young girls.

"My kids used to not see me," said Babakrkhil, who notes that the new work arrangement has also afforded him time to start exercising. "Now I make a little bit less, but I'm enjoying my life ... I'm happy this way."

Babakrkhil's colleague Deyo Hirata, who also received a considerable raise, said he now frets less about making ends meet. Though he has always taken pride in his job and maintained a good relationship with his managers, he says the wage hike has made him feel better rewarded for his labor. Nobody will get rich earning $15 per hour in an area as expensive as greater Seattle, but for the first time now, Hirata is seeing the possibility of savings.

"Money is always a hassle, but it has taken whatever subtle pressures off," Hirata said of the wage increase. "It's changed my attitude about struggling. It's less stress in your life, bottom line."

Raising the minimum wage is a popular idea right now. Though the federal minimum wage hasn't moved since 2009, cities and states throughout the country have passed minimum wage hikes in recent years, bringing raises to millions of service workers like Babakrkhil and Hirata. Thanks to a handful of state ballot initiatives approved in November, for the first time ever a majority of states now have minimum wages higher than the federal level of $7.25.

But nowhere have the raises been so vast and sudden as in SeaTac, a small city at the forefront of what's become known as the Fight for $15 labor movement. Funded by the Service Employees International Union, Fight for $15 has held a series of high-profile worker strikes in cities around the country over the past three years. Though the strikes and protests started with fast food workers, they have grown to include home and child care workers, and even adjunct professors.

The passage of SeaTac’s minimum wage ballot initiative, which SEIU helped to fund, marked the first concrete policy win for the national Fight for $15 movement. The SeaTac victory was also instrumental in bringing a $15 minimum wage to the much larger city of Seattle: Once it became clear that voters in nearby SeaTac weren't afraid to pass such an aggressive wage hike, Seattle businesses joined with city officials and labor leaders to hash out a minimum wage law that employers would find palatable. A deal was reached just months after SeaTac voters approved their proposal, and Seattle's city council passed it into law in June 2014. However, unlike in SeaTac, where the wage was raised immediately, Seattle businesses will be eased into a $15 minimum wage over a multi-year phase-in period.

SeaTac and Seattle were likely the most visible victories in the ambitious push for $15, which has drawn strong opposition from business groups. But the successes in those cities undoubtedly helped progressives pass more modest wage hikes around the country, in addition to influencing the debate over income inequality on Capitol Hill. Although Congress is no closer to reaching a deal to raise the minimum wage -- Republicans have steadfastly opposed a hike in recent sessions -- Democrats are now considering raising their initial wage proposal, from $10.10 to $12.

Significant as it is, however, the SeaTac minimum wage law only applies to a sliver of the city’s workers -- for now. To make it politically feasible, the measure was tailored to apply to transportation and hospitality workers at large businesses tied to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, rather than to all private employers within the city. Among those exempted from the law: free-standing restaurants not tied to hotels; unionized hotels that already have a collective bargaining agreement with workers; hotels with fewer than 30 employees or 100 guest rooms; and "park and fly" lots with fewer than 100 parking spaces or 25 employees.

And most importantly, the minimum wage -- which ticked up to $15.24 on Jan. 1, because it’s pegged to inflation -- doesn't yet apply at the actual airport. After SeaTac’s ballot initiative passed, several businesses, led by Alaska Airlines, banded together and sued to stop the minimum wage from going into effect. The law was upheld for companies like MasterPark, but a King County Superior Court judge ruled that the city did not have the authority to set a wage floor at the airport itself, since it is owned by the Port of Seattle.

With that case waiting on an appeals ruling, thousands of workers employed at the airport can still legally earn below $15 per hour. The ruling, expected any week now, will determine whether or not the law will apply to those workers.

Puget Sound Sage, an advocacy group that backs the minimum wage law, estimates that more than 6,000 additional workers would be covered if the law is upheld for the airport. City Clerk Kristina Gregg told The Huffington Post that SeaTac does not track how many workers the law currently covers, but the Puget Sound Business Journal estimated that 1,100 workers received raises under the law last year.

The drivers and attendants at MasterPark feel fortunate to fall under the law. MasterPark's owners, less so.

The company operates five lots near the airport, parking travelers' cars and ferrying them to and from the terminals. Because valet parking is labor-intensive, MasterPark fell within the minimum wage law even while many automated self-parking lots near the airport did not. The company opposed the SeaTac proposal when it was being considered. Once the initiative passed, MasterPark instituted a 99-cent daily fee on top of its typical $14.95 daily parking rate. The fee, dubbed a "living wage" surcharge, is meant to absorb additional labor costs, which the company estimated at $1.4 million a year.

Jed Goniu, president of MasterPark, said he doesn't have a problem with a $15 minimum wage per se. He just wishes the law had been applied more equitably and in steps.

"We're not against a $15 minimum wage if it encompasses everybody," Goniu said. "If we're on the same playing field, with the same rules, then it's easier to compete."

But despite its own opposition to the law and the legal objections being raised by other businesses, MasterPark management made a promise to its employees after the proposal passed: Once workers started receiving a $15 wage, it wouldn't be taken away from them, even if the law crumbled in court or was repealed. The rationale was that no worker’s wages should ever be reduced.

In interviews with HuffPost, several employees said they appreciated the way MasterPark accepted a law with which it clearly wasn't thrilled.

"That's why I've worked here for nine years -- they treat us good," said Babakrkhil. (It’s worth noting that although Goniu has issues with the law, when a Huffington Post reporter showed up unannounced at his office, the company president graciously allowed the reporter to interview employees in private on company grounds.)

Not all workers have felt that their employers were as cooperative, however. Last year, three workers filed a lawsuit against Cedarbrook Lodge, claiming the hotel didn’t pay them $15 per hour and their full tips as required by the law. The lodge’s parent company denied the allegations. (A general manager at Cedarbrook had previously said he would close some of the hotel's rooms to avoid falling under the purview of the minimum wage ordinance.) Another company, a parking outfit called Extra Car, was sued by a former employee who claimed she was paid $10.32 per hour when she should have been receiving $15.

Then there are the thousands of workers at the airport who aren't covered by the law and may never be, depending on the outcome of the pending appeal. One of those workers, Michael Church, said there's a misconception that the SeaTac minimum wage applies throughout the city. Church works at the airport as a ramp agent, or "ramper," as the job is known colloquially, for an airline subcontractor called Menzies Aviation.

"It's really frustrating," Church, who has become a Fight for $15 activist, said of the litigation. "There's a lot of anticipation [among airport workers] about it."

Church, 31, makes $9.50 per hour preparing ramps for airlines such as Iceland Air, Sun Country, Virgin America, British Airways and JetBlue. Unable to afford his own apartment, he currently lives at his grandmother's house and commutes two hours each way on public transit. Church said he already knows what he would do with the extra money he would make under a $15 minimum wage.

"What I would do is I would go and get my own place," said Church. "I would be caught up on all my bills. I wouldn't be struggling to figure out how am I going to pay this."

If MasterPark is any indication, SeaTac businesses will find a way to live with the wage increase, even if it means passing some costs off onto consumers. (After the law had spent a year on the books, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that the once-contentious measure had become a "shoulder shrug" around town.) With the airport expected to expand its capacity in the coming years, the city has only seen its hospitality sector grow since the law was passed, according to City Manager Todd Cutts, who pointed to the increased number of permits being issued for hotels. Although the city doesn't survey businesses to see if the law has stifled business growth, he said, it doesn't appear that economic disaster has ensued.

"We certainly have seen planned growth here in the community," Cutts said.

The SeaTac wage floor also brought a raise to Ashley Young, a cashier at MasterPark. Young, 27, said her hourly wage has risen by more than $3 since the law went into effect.

Asked whether the change has affected her life in any meaningful way, Young said that she's once again playing competitive softball, a favorite pastime. She had to give up the sport under her previous pay because she couldn't afford the travel costs.

"The old wage I was making before, it was kind of a struggle," Young said. "Now I'm allowed to have a little bit of fun, and a life."

Upcoming BMW Lets You Stand Outside Car While Parking It

There may soon be a solution to the woes of parallel parkers everywhere.

The forthcoming BMW’s 7 Series will maneuver into parking spots without a driver sitting in the car. The drivers navigates the control from outside the vehicle by using a new key fob, which combines a remote control and an LCD screen and can guide the car in and out of tight spots and garages.

According to Gizmodo, the car's official design hasn't been unveiled yet. No word yet on when the 7 Series will be released, either.

Check out the feature in action in this promotional video BMW released April 18:

Mercedes-Benz has a similar automated parking feature called "active parking assist," though the driver must remain in the car to operate the accelerator and brake pedal.

Though the 7 Series is not a true driverless car, it may pit BMW once more against Tesla, which announced recently that it would roll out self-driving software for its cars as early as this summer. The software update, which is for Model S sedans sold after last October, would free up drivers on long commutes on major highways. Tesla plans to equip forthcoming Model X sports utility vehicles with the autopilot feature, as well.

“We can basically go between San Francisco and Seattle without the driver doing anything,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said of the feature.

BMW released its own mass-produced electric car, the i3, early last year. At around $45,000, it is significantly cheaper than Tesla’s Model S, which has a price tag of $70,000, and drives between 80 and 100 miles between charges. BMW previously tested a "remote valet parking assistant" app on the i3, allowing the vehicle to park itself and come back to pick up the driver. But the app would require detailed maps of every parking garage, casting doubt on its practicality.

Mercedes-Benz and Google have been testing their own driverless cars in recent months. The Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion was teased at the Consumer Electronics Show last year, and popped up in San Francisco last month.

Google also patented external airbags and bumpers for its self-driving car just a few weeks ago. The design would protect pedestrians in the case of a collision, and signals an early effort to respond to ethical debates over automated control.

Apple Makes New Commitment To Fight Climate Change, But Has A Long Way To Go

Apple on Monday released its 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report, underscoring its commitment to lessening the environmental impact of its products and operations. "We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it," the company stated in the report.

But Apple still has a long way to go when it comes to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down on paper use and eliminating the amount of toxic substances in its devices.

The report said Apple's overall carbon footprint increased between 2013 and 2014, in part because the company is selling more products. It also noted that Apple is working to make products less carbon-intensive to manufacture and use.

The report went on to say that renewable resources power 100 percent of Apple's data centers, corporate offices and retail stores in the United States, as well as 87 percent of its global facilities. In addition, all of its U.S. data centers have been powered with 100 percent renewable energy since 2012.

Yet the report says that the energy used by Apple facilities in the 2014 fiscal year represented only 1 percent of the company's carbon footprint. By contrast, manufacturing accounted for a whopping 73 percent of the company’s 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

While the new report doesn't address the volume of paper products used for packaging, it does says that during the 2014 fiscal year, "over 80 percent of the paper and corrugated cardboard used in our iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, and Apple TV packaging came from certified sustainably managed forests, controlled wood sources, or recycled materials."

Last week, Apple announced it was purchasing 36,000 acres of forest -- 3,600 in North Carolina and 32,400 in Maine -- to supply paper for its packaging.

The new report also addresses toxic substances in electronics and Apple's efforts to reduce or eliminate these materials for the sake of the environment and human health. "Our goal is to make not just the best products in the world, but the best products for the world," the company wrote.

A 2014 BBC investigation showed allegedly poor working conditions and exhausted employees in undercover footage from a Chinese factory producing Apple products. Apple's previous reports on its suppliers show that "30 percent [of them] don't comply with the company's own safety standards and 18 percent fail to comply with standards on hazardous chemical exposure," according to Wired.

Apple's environmental efforts are led by Lisa Jackson, who joined the company in May 2013 after serving as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2009 to 2013. Her voice can be heard in the "Better Starts Here" video Apple released alongside the report. The ad touts plans to build a 40-megawatt solar farm in China to offset the electricity used by its offices and stores in that country.

"We're directing our innovation into conservation, to get to net zero," Jackson says in the video. “We are learning more and more about new places where we can be better, with renewable energy, hydropower and forest preservation. New ways in which we can leave the world better than we found it."

At last year's annual shareholder meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook told members of a think tank skeptical of manmade climate change that they should ditch Apple stock if they didn't agree with the company's environmental efforts.

Both Google and Microsoft also have made commitments to improving their sustainability and offsetting their operations with renewable energy.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

Why 'Sweatworking' Is The New Lunch Meeting

(Reuters) - Sweatworking, the growing practice of meeting clients for a walk, a run or a fitness class, is elbowing networking out of bars and restaurants and into boutique fitness studios.

A yoga, barre or spin class has become the new nine holes of golf, fitness experts said, chased by a post-workout smoothie rather than a three-martini lunch.

“Sweatworking was born out of a desire to connect with clients on a deeper level that wasn’t so sales-y,” said Sarah Siciliano, 32, an advertising executive who has been entertaining clients with workouts. “A lot of sales jobs revolve around drinking.”

Siciliano, who is based in New York City, considers taking her mostly female clients, who range in age from 22 to 52, to yoga, spinning, bootcamp and dance studios a great tool to develop relationships.

“People like to move along with the trends,” said Siciliano, who organizes her workout events.

“I do all the leg work but I exercise everyday anyway so for me it’s a win-win,” she said. “If you can knock out a client event and your workout at the same time, why not?”

Sweatworking began in the advertising world, but has spread to more traditionally conservative professions such as law and banking, according to Alexia Brue, co-founder of the wellness media company Well+Good.

“Now a lot of client entertaining in many industries has moved into boutique studios,” she said, “especially to those with workouts that aren’t super awkward, or super-sweaty to do with a client.”

Gabby Etrog Cohen, vice president of public relations and brand strategy at SoulCycle, a national chain of 39 indoor cycling studios, said in four years sweatworking has become a regular part of her business.

“We get a mixed bag, a lot of people in financing and advertising,” said Cohen. “We have groups that come in every week. One group comes every Thursday.”

Part of the appeal, she speculates, resides in the dim studio lights.

“There’s something about not wanting to sweat in front of clients,” she said. “We ride in the dark so there’s a sense of anonymity.”

For 45 minutes and $35 per class, the studio provides an alternative to the traditional four-hour round of golf.

Cohen said the rise of sweatworking marks the distance traveled from the chain-smoking, inebriated lifestyle of the 1960’s portrayed in the hit HBO series “Mad Men.”

“We’ve taken ‘Mad Men’ and turned it on its head,” she said.

Here's What Uber Is Doing For Its Very Best Drivers

Uber is the poster child for disruption and technological innovation. Yet with a new program meant to inspire its drivers, the 6-year-old startup is deploying a pretty old-school tactic: an employee-of-the-week award for drivers.

There's a bit of a twist though -- Uber drivers aren't technically company employees.

Each week, Uber awards two drivers a Sixth Star for exceptional service. Winners get a $1,000 American Express gift card, some corporate schwag -- hat, medal of honor, etc. -- and public recognition for being awesome.

“We want to recognize service for which our five-star rating system is simply not enough,” Uber vice president David Richter told The Huffington Post in an email, referring to how the ride-share app lets customers rank drivers on a scale of one to five stars.

Marketing and management experts said the program, which was just expanded globally, has the potential to inspire drivers, and signals to customers that Uber values drivers.

“It’s a nice way to say we care about high quality and we’re working on ways to reinforce it,” said Derek Rucker, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management. Rucker said the program could also motivate Uber drivers to provide better service.

Yet some Uber drivers HuffPost spoke with hadn’t yet heard about the awards. A few said that adding a “sixth star” does little to alleviate problems they have with Uber’s five-star rating system, a source of anxiety.

Now valued at more than $41 billion, Uber is growing rapidly. It now operates in 300 cities across 56 countries. Slowly, Uber seems to be doing more for its growing fleet of drivers, who operate essentially as small business owners. Uber calls them "driver partners," and they don't receive benefits like health insurance, paid vacation or sick leave.

A month after starting Sixth Star this fall, the company also launched a rewards program that offers its drivers discounts on auto care and wireless services, as well as help finding health insurance. In March, the company launched an internal magazine to foster more community between drivers.

Launched in October and expanded globally last week, the Amex-sponsored program gives awards to two Uber drivers each week for exceptional service. One driver is chosen because she has the highest rating and number of trips in a given region. The other driver is nominated by an Uber passenger for doing something extraordinary. The winners rotate between six regions, in Europe, Asia/Pacific and three areas in the Americas. While the company has done things like this at the local level, the program is one of its first global marketing pushes. So far, 28 Uber drivers have won.

Edith Woodie, a driver in Atlanta, won a Sixth Star for voluntarily helping a man healing from amputation surgery do his grocery shopping inside the store, instead of just waiting for him out in the car.

Ideen Barimani, an Uber X driver in Baltimore with the highest rating on the East Coast (4.96), told HuffPost that winning a Sixth Star was a “validation” of all the hard work he puts into the job. Barimani said he pulls in anywhere from $600 to $800 a week driving his grey Toyota Corolla for around 40 to 50 hours. The 35-year-old takes Uber’s advice on customer service -- keeping his car stocked with bottled water and Starbursts, Hershey miniatures and other candies. He also provides riders with chargers for their phones. And, as a self-professed animal lover, he’s totally cool with carting around passengers’ dogs. He’s open to conversation with passengers, if desired. “If riders want to be left alone, I get the hint,” he told HuffPost.

Sixth Star winner Ideen Barimani.

Giving workers prizes for doing their jobs doesn’t always work out the way business owners and managers plan. In close-knit workplaces, employee of the month awards can sow seeds of animosity, said Kellogg’s Rucker. “You create unnecessary competition in the workplace. Someone wins and everyone else is upset.”

But Uber’s program avoids some of the classic pitfalls, said Rucker. Uber has a huge and disparate workforce. It’s unlikely the program will foment jealousy of management “favorites” or some kind of worker revolt.

“Given it’s a rare award and a big workforce, it’s more like winning the lottery than a typical award,” said Timothy Gubler, a doctoral candidate at Washington University who has researched employee awards. "People don’t feel like ‘I should’ve won the lottery,'” he said.

Uber drivers had a mixed reaction to the program. “If you give me a thousand dollars, that means I’m doing my job right,” New York Uber driver Mina Morgan said.

Sixth Star winner Edith Woodie.

Others either hadn’t heard about it yet, or were more skeptical. “The award is a marketing ploy. It isn’t going to encourage drivers to do anything they weren’t going to do,” said Casandria Harris, a driver in San Antonio. “It might encourage passengers to acknowledge drivers who go above and beyond."

Beyond the Sixth Star, drivers said the ratings system can be unfair. Ratings can drop for reasons beyond their control -- like traffic, or if Uber raises its prices because of increased demand. Driving people around at night -- when they're more likely to be inebriated -- also puts the rating at risk. Uber said its system accounts for this, and notes that the more rides drivers give, the harder it is for one bad rating to knock them back. Still, it's nerve-wracking -- if the rating drops below a certain threshold, drivers could lose their job.

Over the past year, a few Uber drivers were charged with rape and assault, and there was a big dust-up last fall over the company’s interactions with journalists. Partly due to the bad publicity, the percentage of U.S. adults who’ve actually heard of Uber grew to nearly 60 percent from about 45 percent over the past four months, according to data from market research firm YouGov BrandIndex.

One big challenge for Uber is getting more people to sign up, said YouGov CEO Ted Marzilli. He noted the brand gets very favorable ratings from those who actually use the service. A program like Sixth Star, which personalizes drivers and tells their stories, could help gain more goodwill for the brand -- though it’s still in the early stages.

Uber customers will like knowing their ratings could help their drivers, said Uber user Erin Flior, a vice president at communications firm Levick who works on digital marketing campaigns. Flior doesn’t always take the time to rate her drivers, but now that she knows something positive could come out of it, she said she’ll be doing it more often.

--Timothy Stenovec contributed reporting.

Protesters Take Part In Nationwide Rally For $15 Minimum Wage

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered across the country on Wednesday to speak out against low wages.

The demonstrations are led by the group Fight for $15, which seeks a minimum hourly wage of $15 for fast-food employees. Though McDonald's raised hourly wages to $9.90 for a fraction of its workforce earlier this month, workers say this is hardly enough and are demanding a basic living wage.

The movement has also grown to include protests for higher pay for adjunct professors, airport workers and employees at large retailers. Marches began Tuesday in Boston and Detroit, and soon expanded to more than 200 cities and college campuses on Wednesday.

Fast-food protests in over 100 cities last September resulted in dozens of arrests. This time, however, organizers are not looking to get arrested in order to make a statement.

"It's something different," says Kendall Fells, organizing director of Fight for $15, told USA Today. "This is much more of an economic and racial justice movement than the fast-food workers strikes of the past two years."

The Fight for $15 campaign first began in 2012 and is funded by the Service Employees International Union.

Protester rally outside a Burger King restaurant in College Park, Georgia, on Wednesday morning.

Protesters lead a demonstration in Miami Gardens, Florida.

Striking workers outside Madison Burger King to #FightFor15 @WiscJobsNow pic.twitter.com/7pM1AwGST6

— Will Kramer (@wnkramer) April 15, 2015

Taking over an intersection in NYC right now! #FightFor15 pic.twitter.com/tlqk13Wxd2

— Fast Food Forward (@FastFoodForward) April 15, 2015

Photos of Boston #FightFor15 march. http://t.co/D5KcP05mle @WageAction pic.twitter.com/uTUESwJu7z

— BNN News (@news_bnn) April 15, 2015

#FightFor15 protest inside @McDonalds in San Francisco @Demotix http://t.co/0ZB5vooOXL #RaiseTheWage #FastFoodGlobal #sfbos #McDonalds

— Steve Rhodes (@tigerbeat) April 15, 2015

#Miami fast-food workers strike today to demand $15 per hour wages. http://t.co/0NKQqx79Af #FightFor15 pic.twitter.com/P1KyiUjdsU

— Miami New Times (@MiamiNewTimes) April 15, 2015

BREAKING: Southside Chicago McDonalds CLOSED because of workers ON STRIKE! #FightFor15 pic.twitter.com/g1PpxoVRWB

— Fight For 15 Chicago (@chifightfor15) April 15, 2015

The movement has also gained international support, with workers leading protests in Auckland, New Zealand, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Fastfoodworkers' strike in Amsterdam. @YoungUnitedNL #halfloon #FNV #FightFor15 #FastFoodGlobal pic.twitter.com/PbbAY0sG7m

— Ron Meyer (@MeyerRon) April 15, 2015

CEO Slashes $1 Million Salary To Give Lowest-Paid Workers A Raise

Three weeks ago, Dan Price took a $930,000 pay cut.

Growing income inequality had been on his mind for months. But as he went for a hike with a friend one afternoon and listened to her describe her struggle with rising rent prices, he realized he had to do something for his own employees.

So Price, the founder and CEO of Gravity Payments in Seattle, decided to raise the minimum salary at his 120-person payment processing company to $70,000. At a company where the average pay was $48,000 per year, the move -- which was first reported by The New York Times on Monday -- affected 70 workers, 30 of whom saw their salaries double.

Most of the money for these raises will come from cutting Price's salary -- which is now $70,000 per year rather $1 million. The rest will come out of the $2.2 million the company expects to earn in profit this year.

“There’s greater inequality today than there’s been since the Great Recession,” Price told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “I’d been thinking about this stuff and just thought, ‘It’s time. I can’t go another day without doing something about this.’”

The $70,000 figure is just below the $75,000 salary pegged in a 2010 Princeton University study as an ideal benchmark for achieving happiness. About 28 percent of Americans said they would feel successful earning at most $70,000 per year, according to a 2012 survey from the jobs site CareerBuilder.

The pay cut won’t affect Price's lifestyle much. He has saved a lot of the money he has earned since starting Gravity in 2004. He said he has no plans to replace his 12-year-old Audi, which has clocked more than 140,000 miles. And his new salary will still allow him to pick up the bar tab for his friends once a month, he said.

“There will be sacrifices,” said Price, 30. “But once the company’s profit is back to the $2.2 million level, my pay will go back. So that’s good motivation.”

In the U.S., the average CEO earns more than 350 times what the average worker does. Seattle has become a hotbed in the fight for higher wages as the city phases in a $15 minimum wage, one of the highest in the country. The city is also home to wealthy investor Nick Hanauer, a self-styled champion for higher pay who has warned his fellow billionaires that pitchfork-wielding mobs will follow them to their private jets if income inequality isn’t addressed.

Rather than see this as a charitable offer to his workers, Price sees the pay raises as an investment. In theory, workers motivated by higher salaries will ultimately attract more business and handle clients better.

“This is a capitalist solution to a social problem,” Price said. “I think it pays for itself, I really do.”

The Rich Live Longer Than The Rest Of Us

There's another way the rich are different from you and me: They live longer.

The more money you have, the healthier you are and the longer you live, according to a new study from the Urban Institute crunching data from the Centers for Disease Control.

The study divides Americans into five income groups and finds that each income group is healthier than the one below it and sicker than the one above it.

And that outcome is remarkably consistent. Bloomberg's John Tozzi points out that in almost every category of ailment, from heart disease to arthritis to kidney disease to strokes, prevalence drops almost in lock step as income rises.

The same phenomenon is true, the CDC finds, for life expectancy. This chart shows just how steps up in income lead to longer lives.

There are dozens of reasons why every bit of extra wealth and income improves health and lifespan. Access to better health care is only the most obvious. Richer people also benefit from better living conditions generally, the study's authors note.

The poor are also far more likely to be stressed, worried, sad, and angry than the rich, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institute's Carol Graham. "In the United States", she writes, "poverty is exacting a high cost."

And a separate CDC study last week found that, the higher you are on the income ladder, the less likely you are to be sleep-deprived.

In other words, being rich is the best health-care plan America offers.

Uninsured Rate Gets Lower And Lower, Thanks To Obamacare

WASHINGTON-- The Affordable Care Act was designed to slash the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance, and it's working.

The uninsured rate fell to 11.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, 1 percentage point below the rate at the close of 2014, according to the findings of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll published Monday. The decline coincides with the start of benefits for new Obamacare enrollees at the beginning of 2015.

The latest uninsured figure from the Gallup survey is the lowest since the polling firm began tracking the number in 2008, and contributes to a remarkable decline of 5.2 percentage points in the share of people without health coverage since the end of 2013, just before the first wave of Obamacare health insurance enrollees joined the ranks of the insured.

Source: Gallup

African-Americans, Hispanics and people with low incomes saw the greatest gains in insurance coverage, Gallup found.

Some of the increase in the proportion of Americans with health coverage likely is related to the improving job market, and the health benefits provided by employers, Gallup notes. But the pollsters conclude that Obamacare is mostly responsible for the current trend because the uninsured rate is lower than it was in early 2008, when the economy was in recession.

About 12 million people are covered by private health insurance obtained via the exchanges, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A separate analysis published by the department last month estimates that 16 million fewer Americans are uninsured because of the Obamacare coverage expansion, including the exchanges and Medicaid.

Were more states to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the uninsured rate would fall more sharply, as it did in Indiana earlier this year. Previous surveys showing state-by-state numbers illustrate that Obamacare's effect on the uninsured is diminished by states' refusal to expand Medicaid.

Although Montana appears poised to adopt the Medicaid expansion this month, efforts in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah this year have been stymied by Republican opposition. Almost 5.5 million people had enrolled into Medicaid because they qualified under the expansion in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Friday.

The sharp reduction in the uninsured rate since Obamacare benefits began to take effect last year could soon be undone, however. The Supreme Court is slated to rule in June ona lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that claims the Affordable Care Act's subsidies can only be provided in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, not in the federally run exchanges in the rest of the country.

A high court ruling for the plaintiffs would invalidate the subsidies received by more than 85 percent of exchange enrollees and destabilize the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges. The Rand Corp. estimates this would result in 9.6 million people becoming uninsured.

Why Walking Meetings Can Be Better Than Sitting Meetings

Walking meetings are a kind of a big deal at LinkedIn. On any given day you can find workers strolling and talking together on the bike path at the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters. The path takes about 20-25 minutes to circle -- perfect for a half-hour one-on-one with a colleague.

The walk and talks have obvious benefits. Desk-bound office workers can all use a bit more exercise. Sitting too much is killing us. Yet the walking meeting’s upsides go far beyond the physical. Walking helps break down formalities, relaxes inhibitions and fosters camaraderie between colleagues -- and less eye contact can fuel more personal conversation. Meeting on the go also minimizes distractions -- no phones, no email, no texts, no colleagues interrupting you.

Perhaps most intriguing, walking leads to more creative thinking, according to a recent study from researchers at Stanford University.

With sit-downs indoors, you face each other across a table. “You feel like you’re at the principal’s office,” Igor Perisic, LinkedIn’s vice president of engineering told The Huffington Post. “That’s not what you want.”

Perisic recounted a time when he and a colleague were trying to solve an issue with LinkedIn’s search function. They spent hours in a room with a white board trying to work it out. Still he felt that he was missing something.

“So we went out on a walk and talked about it,” Perisic said. When they got back indoors, they had the solution. “And it seemed like the obvious choice.”

You can find many big-shot fans of the walk and talk -- including Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and this guy named Barack Obama. There’s even a TED Talk devoted solely to the topic.

Obama (left) is reportedly a big fan of the walking meeting.

We all intuitively understand that it's nice to get some fresh air outside, but new research shines a light on why walking could be especially good in a work environment.

When we walk we let our guard down, said Marily Oppezzo, who researched walking and creativity, along with her professor Daniel Schwartz, when she was a doctoral student at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. Their paper was published online last year in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

“Walking releases your filter,” said Oppezzo, now a post-doc at Stanford’s School of Medicine. Ideas you hold back in a conference room come spilling out when you’re moving.

To gauge walking’s effect on creativity, Schwartz and Oppezzo had test subjects walk and sit, and then asked them to find alternate uses for everyday items like tires or buttons. One person suggested using a button as a doorknob for a dollhouse, a tiny strainer, something to drop behind you to keep your path, for example.

They found that people who walked were able to come up with more unique ideas, both while they were walking and immediately afterward. And, it didn’t matter much if they walked on a treadmill or outside.

“Walking opens up the free flow of ideas,” they write in their paper.

This doesn’t mean you should convert all your conference rooms into gyms. Sometimes you’re going to need to sit down.

The Stanford researchers found that sitting is the better option when you have to solve a problem for which there is only one right answer. For example, they asked test subjects to come up with a single word that combines with the words “cottage, Swiss, and cake.” The sitters were better able to figure out the answer: cheese.

LinkedIn’s Perisic said that sometimes he needs to be near a whiteboard to work on a project. For difficult conversations -- say, letting someone know their performance isn’t measuring up -- he likes to talk in a more formal setting. “It’s tough to have the conversation outside.”

Mark Zuckerberg (left) and Jeff Weiner are both big fans of the walk and talk.

Still, Perisic, who oversees about 220 people, can often be found walking with someone on his team. And his CEO, Jeff Weiner, has been positively evangelical on the subject.

“It's energizing to get outside for a 30 minute walk a few times a day,” he said in a recent interview published on LinkedIn. “[It] just changes the whole state of things.”

Other Silicon Valley companies get the whole walking thing, too. Facebook just put in a half-mile loop on the roof of its new headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and workers there do a lot of walking meetings.

LinkedIn’s walking tradition was born more out of necessity than a careful review of research. During the firm’s early days, when it was growing quickly, it was really hard to book a conference room, Weiner told Bloomberg recently. “We had a lot of people and not enough space.”

A colleague suggested walking meetings as a fix -- solve the space issue and get some exercise. “It was very practical,” Weiner said.

The company's expanded since then, and it now has more space. But no one’s going back inside.

The Future Of Driving, In One Provocative Chart

In the future, only rich people will own cars and only robots will drive them.

That’s the takeaway from a new research note from Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas. Like Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, he predicts that improvements in self-driving technology will eventually lead to bans on human driving on most roads.

Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, which have already been widely adopted in major urban centers, have paved the way for cities, and eventually suburbs, to adopt mega-fleets of public vehicles that will taxi passengers around. This will dramatically lower the cost per ride to about 25 cents per mile, which is roughly one-tenth of what a traditional taxi costs, Jonas said. He provides no clear timeline for when this might occur.

By contrast, wealthy people -- at least in the near-term -- will own self-driving vehicles, a fact on which Mercedes-Benz and Tesla seem to be banking.

Again, Jonas provides no clear timeline. But an increasing number of luxury carmakers are already adding autonomous features to their vehicles. In October, Tesla's Musk estimated that fully driverless cars will be on the road by 2023.

Here’s how the chart breaks down:

• Quadrant 1: Today, most drivers own or lease their own vehicles, which they drive themselves. Autonomous driving technology is only beginning to emerge.
• Quadrant 2: Over the past few years, ride-hailing services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar have alleviated the need to own a car in many major cities, making a driver much more accessible. Jonas said this is a logical step toward the so-called mega-fleets of public, autonomous cars.
• Quadrant 3: Over the next decade, rich people will likely swap out the cars they drive for cars that drive themselves. Already, Tesla is planning to roll out a version of its Model S sedan that has limited autopilot features sometime this summer. The latest version of the car, announced on Wednesday, starts at $67,500 after a Federal Tax Credit.
• Quadrant 4: This is the final evolution in the car industry and there is no clear date for when this will come to fruition. But with few exceptions, most people will be driven by cars that are either a public utility or part of a privately-owned fleet that users subscribe to use. At this point, laws will likely restrict human driving to select roads, Jonas wrote. Other forms of public transportation, such as subway systems, may become obsolete.

The CEO Who Took On Indiana's Anti-LGBT Law -- And Won

For Marc Benioff, the fight against Indiana's widely criticized "religious freedom" law was personal.

The Salesforce CEO was a leading voice in the national outcry against Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed last month. Critics argued that the original version of the RFRA would have permitted businesses to discriminate against LGBT people.

Benioff said his advocacy was an effort to help his employees and customers whom the law might have affected, something he describes as being key to his personal philosophy.

“I’m all for a healthy mind and a healthy body, but I’m also about having a healthy planet and a healthy country and taking care of others that don’t have as much,” Benioff, a habitual meditator, told The Huffington Post on Monday from his vacation home in Hawaii. “That’s my spirituality.”

On March 25, a day before Pence first signed Indiana's RFRA, Benioff became the first major business leader to speak out against the law by threatening to scale back his company's investment in the state. After the governor approved the measure, Benioff swung back even harder, posting what he called the "tweet heard 'round the world," in which he announced plans to cancel all Salesforce programs that would require customers or employees to travel to Indiana. Indeed, it was retweeted nearly 9,800 times and favorited more than 8,300 times and became part part of the national conversation.

The following week, he stepped up his campaign again, promising relocation packages to Salesforce employees in Indiana who wanted to transfer elsewhere.

“CEOs are very much the advocates of their customers and employees, as well as of the environment and local communities,” Benioff said. “The most successful CEOs today are advocates for their stakeholders, not just their shareholders.”

After a week of backlash, Pence approved a revised version of the measure, this time explicitly banning businesses from refusing service because of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Benioff may have been the first major CEO to express his opposition to the legislation, but he was soon joined by others. Corporate giants and organizations from Apple to NASCAR rallied behind LGBT rights groups in Indiana to fight the law.

Still, the Salesforce chief may have been uniquely positioned to champion the cause in Indiana. For starters, San Francisco-based Salesforce became the state's largest tech employer when it acquired the marketing software firm ExactTarget in 2013.

And, Benioff has a lot of powerful friends.

The day after the law passed, he said, he emailed the people he regularly meets and dines with in San Francisco, many of whom are top tech industry executives. Among them was Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal and the chief executive of financial management site Affirm. Four days after Benioff sent the email, when he flicked on CNBC as he started his morning workout at the gym, he saw Levchin railing against Indiana’s law.

“I was completely blown away,” Benioff said, noting that Levchin went on to organize more than 70 top executives to sign a joint statement condemning the law last week. “This is really the first time that we have started something, and the reason it got started -- the reason it was successful -- is because it was so many different CEOs banding together.”

Benioff has long practiced the "stakeholder theory," a philosophy advocated by World Economic Forum founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, among others. The ideology views shareholders as second to employees, customers, suppliers, communities, trade unions and others who are affected by a company’s commerce. Imbued with a strong sense of corporate responsibility and connected with its community, a firm that's guided by these principles might, the philosophy suggests, earn greater profits over time, translating into higher returns for investors. It’s the corporate equivalent of building good karma.

In the two weeks since Benioff began his campaign, emails have poured in from workers thanking him for stepping up. He said he's never received so much positive employee feedback in his 16-year tenure at Salesforce.

“When the economic hammer came down, that’s when things really started to change,” he said. “There’s one word that was continually used by everyone in Indiana, which was ‘historic.’ That’s something that we in San Francisco, or those of us who don’t live in Indiana, don’t have the perspective to understand, but for them this was historic.”

Benioff pledged to continue the fight by urging the Indiana legislature to add the LGBT community as a protected class under local civil rights laws in its next session.

“The conversation happened the right way,” he said. “It opens the door for another change and another change, probably in the next legislature.”

The CEO admits that not every step in this push to change the law has been graceful. He became the target of some criticism after a CNN interview last Wednesday, in which he said, "One thing that you're seeing is that there is a third [political] party emerging in this country, which is the party of CEOs." The comment provoked pushback from those who already fear the influx of money in politics. Benioff said he misspoke as a result of his excitement over the business community’s rapid response to the situation in Indiana.

Benioff hopes business leaders can continue to push for important legislation that affects their stakeholders, and cites patent and immigration reform as specific examples.

Asked whether Indiana just happened to provide the right place and time for business leaders to unite behind a particular political cause, or whether the momentum would continue to grow, Benioff said he was unsure.

"This was so spontaneous, it happened so quickly," he said. "But CEOs do have a lot of power, like it or not, so they need to bring on a stakeholder philosophy."

Why We Should All Stop Trying To Multitask Right Now

People of all attention-span lengths understand how easily a text message, phone call or email notification can distract them from an important task. No one is fully capable of addressing them while staying focused on their current project -- at least not successfully. Yet, for some reason, many of us attempt it anyway.

Janice Marturano from the Institute for Mindful Leadership joined HuffPost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani to explain how the brain is physically incapable of multitasking and why it's not worth trying to juggle several tasks simultaneously.

"What we understand from our study of the brain at this point is that we cannot multitask -- we're simply not capable of doing it," said Marturano. "What we do is we flip back and forth very quickly... There's a huge productivity loss, because when I move from this iPad to this tweet to this email to this project I'm studying, I can't pick it up where I left it off. I have to take a few steps back and ramp back into it, and that's a huge productivity loss."

Watch the full HuffPost Live clip above to hear more about how the brain is incapable of multitasking.

Microsoft Launches Pilot Program To Hire People With Autism

Microsoft is making big strides in creating an inclusive workplace.

The company said it will launch a pilot program to hire people with autism for full-time positions at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

“Microsoft is stronger when we expand opportunity and we have a diverse workforce that represents our customers,” Mary Ellen Smith, Microsoft's corporate vice president of worldwide operations, wrote in a company blog post on April 3. “People with autism bring strengths that we need at Microsoft, each individual is different, some have amazing ability [sic] to retain information, think at a level of detail and depth or excel in math or code.”

Smith, whose 19-year-old son was diagnosed with autism at age 4, went on to write: "At Microsoft, we encourage all employees to realize their full potential. This belief and the inspiration I get from my son is what drives me personally and why I was honored to speak."

The program is part of a larger movement among companies to bring more individuals with autism into the workforce. It is a collaboration with Specialisterne, a Danish firm that trains and finds employment for people with autism.

Specialisterne worked with German software giant SAP last year to introduce a similar initiative to several of SAP’s North American offices after a successful pilot program in India, Germany and Ireland, the Wall Street Journal reports. SAP hopes to hire around 650 people with autism by 2020, which would represent 1 percent of its total staff, per WSJ.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The company has been active lately in aiming to create higher labor standards. This new move comes less than two weeks after Microsoft announced it would require its major U.S. contractors to offer employees 15 days of paid leave, an issue that even the White House has been reluctant to pick up.

March's Weak Jobs Report Is More Evidence The Fed Should Be Careful

The March jobs report, released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was not good. After months of very strong jobs reports, though, it was a specific kind of not good: not outright negative, and nowhere near apocalyptic, just confusingly bad.

As unclear as this month's jobs report was in terms of telling an obvious story about the U.S. economy, when it comes to raising interest rates, it will suit the Federal Reserve just fine. At its last meeting, the Fed tied its decisions on interest rates more closely to economic data, and yet also indicated it would be loathe to raise rates too early and snuff out economic growth. This jobs report lets it be true to both commitments.

The U.S. economy added 126,00 jobs in March, far less than the 247,000 economists, on average, had expected. What's worse, January and February job numbers were revised down by a total of 69,000, making this report even weaker. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.5 percent.

In the first few months of 2015, job growth seems to have slowed down from a breakneck pace in 2014. The job market has grown by a very solid 261,000 new jobs per month over the past six months, the New York Times' Neil Irwin noted. But, as Slate's Jordan Weissmann retorted, in the past three month's we've averaged just 197,000 new jobs per month.

It's still too early to say what these numbers are telling us. Has the U.S. job market finally turned the corner and left the disfigurement of the recession behind? Or is it still scarred and somewhat limping? It could be either.

Wages are also sending mixed signals. Wage growth has been remarkably and depressingly steady at a pace of about 2 percent per year for five years. It stayed remarkably and depressingly steady in March, rising 2.1 percent from a year ago.

But if you look at the past three months, annualized wage growth is an impressive 4 percent, the Peterson Institute's Justin Wolfers pointed out. And other indicators, like employer compensation costs and the number of companies that say they plan to give raises, seem to indicate wage growth is finally picking up.

So, amid all this "on the one hand, on the other hand" data, what is the Federal Reserve supposed to think about the health of the economy -- let alone the wisdom of raising interest rates, as it is widely expected to do at some point in the near future?

As University of Oregon professor Tim Duy pointed out in his excellent analysis of the Fed's most recent meeting, by removing the word "patient" from its description of how it thinks about interest-rate hikes, the Fed is saying it will let data dictate its decision. And the data from the jobs market, even before this bad jobs report, Duy noted, was saying "don't raise rates" anytime soon.

In other words, Duy says that Fed Chair Janet Yellen "[moved] the Fed both closer to and further from the first rate hike of this cycle." That's not as inscrutable as it sounds: The Fed's "closer" to the data, which could potentially improve quickly, and "further" because the data, as it is now, says don't raise rates.

And the March jobs report reinforces that stance: a data-dependent rate hike is still a ways off.

Why Corporate America Is Finally Raising Wages

Some of the country’s biggest employers are finally raising wages amid mounting pressure from protesters and a hardier job market.

McDonald’s on Wednesday became the latest major company to give workers -- albeit a fraction of its total workforce -- a pay bump that will lift average hourly pay to $9.90 from $9.01. The move, which will go into effect on July 1, follows a similar change made in February by Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer.

What, after years of stagnant wage growth for low-paid workers, is causing corporations to shell out more to their staff?

For some companies, the pay raise has been compelled by a sense of ethical leadership.

Aetna Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini raised the minimum wage at the health insurance company to $16 per hour after reading French economist Thomas Piketty’s bestseller Capital In The Twenty-First Century, which warns of the increasingly wide gap between rich and poor.

Other firms have been motivated by the desire to maintain market share.

“We’ve known for a really long time that if you look like a good corporate citizen, that’s good for sales,” Bob Keener, spokesman for the nonprofit Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, told The Huffington Post. “If you make a big public announcement about how you’re going to raise wages, you look like a good corporate citizen, and that’s going to increase your sales.”

Competition is also driving wages up. Call it a wage-hike domino effect. As the U.S. economy continues to add jobs, even retailers who claim to keep prices low in part by minimizing payroll expenses must increase how much they pay their workers to avoid losing them.

Since apparel giant Gap Inc. raised its minimum wage to $9 per hour last year, the company has seen a major influx in applicants, The Washington Post reported.

“When other large, low-wage employers boost their wages, McDonald’s has to be concerned about its employees moving to another employer where they can get another buck per hour,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the nonprofit National Employment Law Project. “There is undoubtedly some tightening in the labor market at the low end that is having an effect on wages.”

Plus, higher wages are good for business. Sales at McDonald’s and Walmart have languished over the past year, and boosting wages could actually be part of a strategy to help turn things around.

For every extra $1 a company spends each month in payroll, it could get back anywhere from $4 to $28 in monthly sales, according to a 2007 study by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and elsewhere.

Companies are also facing intense pressure from protesters to pay a living wage. Workers united under such groups as the "Fight for 15," which advocates for a $15 minimum wage, have led rallies in cities across the world, including a major gathering outside McDonald’s headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, last May. Fight for 15 is also planning a series of strikes for later this month.

Protests for higher pay are gaining steam. This week, Seattle began the process of raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour. Los Angeles is considering bumping the minimum wage for the city’s hotel workers to $15.37 -- making it the highest in the country.

While both McDonald’s and Walmart aim for a $10 average wage by next year, that is still $5 below the wage that protesters are demanding. Critics worry that these incremental pay boosts could be an attempt to undercut a movement that is gaining serious clout.

“This is a PR and a political move meant to knock the wind out of this growing and increasingly militant movement,” Peter Dreier, a professor of urban policy at Occidental College, told HuffPost. “The companies are now competing with each other not to look like they’re the worst employer in the world.”

McDonald's Is Raising Wages For Some Workers

McDonald's is finally giving some of its workers a raise.

The fast-food giant on Wednesday announced plans to give employees a 10-percent pay bump and some extra benefits.

The raise will affect about 90,000 workers at a small fraction of McDonald’s stores. Employees at franchises, which make up the majority of the burger chain's locations, won't be affected.

The increase will lift the average hourly wage at McDonald’s to $9.90, and to more than $10 by the end of next year. The rate currently sits at $9.01, according to the Wall Street Journal.

McDonald's will also let workers at non-franchised locations who have been with the company for more than a year earn up to five days of paid time off each year. Additionally, the company will pay for workers to earn a high school diploma and offer some college tuition assistance. Franchise workers will have access to the educational perks, but not the paid time off.

“We’ve been working on a comprehensive benefits package for our employees -- the people who bring our brand to life for customers every day in our U.S. restaurants,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said in a statement. “We’ve listened to our employees and learned that -- in addition to increased wages -- paid personal leave and financial assistance for completing their education would make a real different in their careers and lives.”

McDonald's did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The move comes two weeks ahead of a planned international strike organized by the movement Fight for $15, which urges fast-food employers to pay workers a minimum wage of $15 per hour.

The group condemned McDonald’s announcement as a “weak move for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits last year.”

“This is too little to make a real difference, and only covers a fraction of workers,” Kwanza Brooks, a McDonald’s employee earning $7.25 per hour in Charlotte, North Carolina, said in a statement. “We’re going to keep fighting until we win $15 and union rights for all fast-food workers and our families.”

McDonald's joins a growing list of low-wage employers, including Walmart and Target, that have raised wages in recent months. Labor advocates point out that wages of $9 or $10 an hour, though well above the national minimum wage of $7.25, are still not enough to pull many families out of poverty.

The raise also marks the latest step by McDonald’s to revitalize its ailing brand amid slumping sales. The company kicked off an aggressive campaign last October to present its food as authentic, going as far as to tout the fact that its meals can, in fact, rot. In January, McDonald's said it would cut more items from its menu as it tries to slim down options. Last month, the chain said it would eliminate human antibiotics from its chicken supply.