Verizon Plans To Close Call Centers In 5 States, Affecting 3,200 Jobs

Verizon Communications Inc  said on Thursday it plans to close call centers in five states, including its home state of New York, as the No. 1 wireless company trims head count and reorganizes operations in a saturated wireless market.

The move, which will affect 3,200 workers is a part of Verizon’s effort to consolidate customer service operations across the United States.

The company, which has a workforce of about 162,700, recently agreed to buy Yahoo Inc for $4.8 billion as it looks to tap new revenue in areas such as digital media and advertising.

“We are realigning our real estate portfolio and relocating these centers into other centers where we have extra capacity,” Verizon spokeswoman Kim Ancin said.

Verizon is offering affected employees jobs in call centers in other states, she said.

The consolidation involves Verizon call centers near Rochester and Orangeburg, New York; Bangor, Maine; Lincoln, Nebraska; Wallingford and Meriden, Connecticut; and Rancho Cordova, California, the company said.

The proposed call center closures, which will impact 850 jobs in New York, drew a testy response from the office of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo.

“This is an egregious example of corporate abuse – among the worst we have witnessed during the six years of this administration,” Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement. Verizon’s call center closures will result in job losses for “hard-working” New Yorkers, he added.

Employees who choose to move to other call centers, which handle sales and billing and help customers with technical problems, will be given relocation packages starting at $10,000, Ancin said. Those who leave the company will be given a severance package, outplacement resources and other support.

In April, nearly 40,000 employees of the wireline business, which includes FiOS Internet, telephone and TV services, represented by unions, went on strike after reaching an impasse in talks over a new labor contract. Sticking points included the relocation of employees and offshoring of call center jobs.

The strike, which was one of the largest in recent years in the United States, drew support from Democratic U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. A new deal was reached in May and striking wireline employees got back to work in June.

The Verizon wireless call center closures in five states involve employees who are not represented by unions, Ancin said.

(Note: Verizon owns AOL, the parent company of The Huffington Post.)

3 Costly Investment Mistakes Made By Millennials

The millennial generation -- love them or hate them -- has and will continue to have a tremendous amount of spending power. But will millennials invest their money wisely?

I recently sat down with International financial advisor and CEO of binary trading platform WMoption, Gordon Malcolm to find out what kind of mistakes entrepreneurs typically make when it comes to investing.

The thing that stuck out to me about Malcolm was that he gave sound advice similar to what Tony Robbins says in Money: Master the Game. I knew right then that he was a credible source.

Here are a few of the things that Malcolm said that millennials (Gen Y) should avoid when it comes to investing:

1. Be careful with traditional investments that you don't understand.

Just because it is age old tradition to invest in mutual funds and the market, that might not be the best move for you. Real estate is always good, but, for many young entrepreneurs investing in your own business might be a better move.

"For someone at the other end of the spectrum that is older and not currently working or earning, those people would make more conservative decisions", added Deep Patel," author of A Paperboy's Fable: The 11 Principles of Success. "If you are young and able to work, you can perhaps afford to be a little more aggressive."

Of course, there is a ton of traditional investment options that are good ideas, but avoid getting caught up in investing in things that you don't understand. "If you don't thoroughly under it, don't invest in it," said Malcolm.

2. Putting all your eggs in one basket.

You might think that you found a hot new investment, but the age old adage of "not putting all your eggs in one basket" is exactly what Malcolm told me. Malcolm said, "No matter how lucrative something might appear, looks can be deceiving."

And I think he is totally spot on. Why would you invest everything into any 1 investment? Even if something looks good, markets can turn around in no time on the drop of a dime. And in this fast-paced world with news changed every second, you never truly know what's going to happen next.

3. Not seeking professional help.

Above all else, a lot of millennials are in the do-it-yourself mindset when it comes to many things. And while that may be good for many other areas of your business, investing may not be one of them.

Think about it this way. If you haven't done your homework and don't thoroughly understand the markets, the sharks are going to eat you alive. In fact, many day traders make their living betting against everyone else.

It is advisable under all circumstances to have a professional help you with your investment decisions. Word of mouth is a great way to find a professional in your area, and Yelp is also a great tool. In fact, in Tony Robbin's book Money, he suggests making sure that whoever is advising you has your best interests first, not just their own pockets.

African Nation Slaps Exxon With Fine Nearly 7 Times Its Own GDP

The African nation of Chad has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. to fork over a sum of money that would make Austin Powers villain Dr. Evil proud ― not quite “100 billion dollars,” but close.

As Bloomberg reports, a court in Chad’s capital of N’Djamena announced in a ruling Oct. 5 that it has ordered the oil and gas giant to pay $74 billion in fines ― a figure nearly seven times the country’s 2015 gross domestic product.

The fine stems from a complaint from Chad’s Ministry of Finance that a consortium led by Exxon hadn’t met its tax obligations, Bloomberg reports. In addition to the $74 billion, the country demands $819 million in royalties. 

Quartz pointed out that Chad’s order would be comparable to the United States fining a company more than $100 trillion.

SUSAN LINNEE/AP

Chadian workers guide a pipe down a well in the Doba oil fields in southern Chad.

In Chad, Exxon operates oilfields and a pipeline system that transports crude oil to Cameroon for export. The country produces around 160,000 barrels of oil per day, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

Todd Spitler, a spokesman for Exxon, said in a statement to The Huffington Post that the company disagrees with the court ruling and is “evaluating next steps.”

“This dispute relates to disagreement over commitments made by the government to the consortium, not the government’s ability to impose taxes,” Spitler wrote. “Contract sanctity and respect for the rule of law are core principles used to manage our business over the long term. It is vital for all parties to honor the terms of a contract and abide by applicable law in order to achieve the desired long-term benefits envisioned when projects begin.”

Brahim Abbo Abakar, president of the Chadian court, reportedly confirmed the ruling to Bloomberg.

The hefty fine from the landlocked African nation comes amid mounting troubles for Exxon in the U.S. The company faces numerous investigations into whether it lied to investors and committed fraud by covering up the risks of climate change for decades. The attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts are probing the company, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an investigation into how Exxon Mobil values future projects amid climate change and plunging oil prices.

Last week, the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy group, made good on its threat to sue Exxon Mobil, filing what it says is the first U.S. legal action aimed at holding the companyaccountable for its well-documented climate change cover-up. 

Want To Be Innovative - Nurture Your Curiosity

Curiosity is the strong desire to know or learn something. Often we associate the word with children who display a strong and natural tendency to be curious. That's why they inundate us with questions asking How? What? When? and Why?

Society often tells us being inquisitive may get you into trouble. It's what the proverb "curiosity killed the cat" implies. Yet curiosity is a valuable commodity and one that needs to be appreciated as it is vital; particularly for entrepreneurs as:

• Curiosity is a way to challenge the status quo by pushing us out of our comfort zone.
• Curiosity directly helps ideas to emerge.
• Curiosity helps us to make connections and repurpose things, which leads to solution finding.

These are just three of the reasons why curiosity is a key trait of entrepreneurs, as most great innovations were simply the direct result of a curious mind.

Think of any innovative person you know and you will find they are curious by nature, constantly learning, yet learning about diverse things, hence often deemed to be polymaths. And yes they constantly ask questions. How can I make it faster? How can I make it better? Is there another way? Why do I have to do it like this? What if I merged this with that? Some of the biggest companies today commenced simply because the founders asked one of these powerful questions and then created something that addressed it.

Innovators like Steve Jobs always had a sound appreciation of the power of curiosity:

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity & intuition turned out to be priceless later on.

Curiosity is a habit and a skill that can be conditioned into your mind the more we work on it. It starts with making simple small changes with everything you do. Asking questions you normally wouldn't, stepping outside of your comfort zone to get out of your old way of thinking. By challenging your current thinking habits you'll eventually create a new and fresh perspective to things that you never had before. But it doesn't just happen overnight, like any new habit you have to work to develop it. And soon you will see things from different perspectives and in doing so be more effective in everything you do.

This is all very well if you're someone who is naturally curious, but what if you're not? Don't worry, here are 5 ways you can nurture your curiosity:

1. Adventure is out there - Travel to different destinations and Google unique or quirky places to stay and things to do there. Be random and pick a destination you haven't been to. There are 197 countries in the world, so it's not like there's not plenty to choose from. And once there, don't do what you always do, try the regions foods, mix with the locals and learn about their lives. Atlas Obscura is a great site for finding curious things to see and do in different countries. And if you're not travelling in the near future, simply take a different route to work.
2. Use your wonder lens - As children we wonder how they got the ship in the bottle and ask how did they make that? Making things can fire up your curiosity. Explore sites such as http://www.instructables.com Make use of potential opportunities to nurture your curiosity on http://www.groupon.com to explore and try new things. Anything from paragliding to macaroon making, because it doesn't matter what you're doing, just that you're doing something different from your norm is what stokes curiosity.
3. Create curiosity by taking action - As humans we have a tendency to stick to the things we like, so make a conscious choice to watch films, movies, documentaries you wouldn't normally watch, read books and articles you wouldn't normally read and listen to podcasts and music you wouldn't normally listen to. Different writing, topics and styles of delivery help us to see the world through an alternative lens.
4. Curiouser and curiouser - Spend time with children, as they are naturally curious and explore everything with a passion, being thrilled with the simplest of things. It's their way of showing how they make sense of their world. Observe how they constantly ask questions - then emulate their curiosity. Thereby re-developing the curiosity trait education and life has removed or limited in us.
5. Be surprised - Instead of watching a Ted Talk on your favourite/regular topics make use of their Surprise Me feature. This is another simple yet effective way to shift from your usual comfort zone, because from one click of a button you're avoiding the usual and learning something new, an alternate perspective to nurturing your curiosity.

It's a pretty well known fact that curiosity and innovation are inextricably interrelated, as one cannot occur without the other. What is perhaps a little less known is that

Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness [Bryant McGill].

And isn't that what life and business is all about? I wonder...

Valuing the Invaluable in Business

This article has been submitted as part of the Natural Capital Coalition's series of blogs on natural capital by Ivo Mulder, REDD+ Economics Advisor, UNEP.

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

Putting an economic value on our natural environmental is difficult, both from an ethical and from a technical perspective. Nature is therefore often regarded as 'priceless'.

However, in our globalized economic system, the value of nature's multitude of critical services is subsequently translated as "0". This is true for services such as crop pollination, water purification, climate regulation and carbon sequestration, and the list goes on.

Many people know in the back of their minds that as we continue to overuse our forest ecosystems, deplete soils, and overuse our water resources, at some stage the "rubber will hit the road".

In other words, there will be real economic and financial impacts. For the private sector then, the race is on to identify how changes in our natural environment can positively or negatively affect the costs and revenues of a business.

We are entering an era where water scarcity, deforestation, soil degradation and biodiversity loss will increasingly incur real costs or affect revenues by companies caught unaware. Take the Malaysian palm oil producer 'IOI Corporation', whose shares has been on a roller coaster.

On 1 April 2016, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) suspended the corporation due to failure to prevent its subsidiaries from illegal deforestation in Indonesia. As a result, 27 major corporate buyers - including Cargill - suspended and terminated relations with IOI and its share price fell 17%. Then on 5 August 2016, shares rallied 5% on the news that the RSPO will lift its suspension effective 8 August 2016. Moody's - a credit rating agency - however maintains a "negative credit outlook" on its debt. (See research conducted by Chain Reaction).

Take another example. The south of Brazil experienced a massive drought in 2015, severely affecting São Paulo state, which accounts for a third of Brazil's economy and 40 percent of its industrial production. The agricultural sector - including production of coffee and sugar (ethanol) - has been seriously affected. An article in the Guardian highlighted that production of Arabica coffee beans fell 15% in 2014, which, (given that Brazil is by far the biggest producer globally), pushed up the global price of the commodity by almost half.

While rising population density and higher water consumption are among the reasons cited, there is increasing evidence that continued deforestation in the Amazon leads to decreased rainfall. Because of the drought, the Brazilian water firm Sabesp also saw the outlook of its credit rating changed to negative.

These are just two among a growing number of examples that show how the deforestation, forest degradation and other environmental issues can be financially material for companies, and therefore, for those who have put money into them, such as stock and bondholders as well as banks and other investors.

So, if you understand as a business that this is real and relevant for your operations, what tools are out there for the private and financial sector to understand the extent to which your company can be affected by natural capital risks?

A good starting point is the Natural Capital Coalition, which has just released a Protocol that guides companies through nine steps to identify, measure and value their impacts and dependencies on the natural environment. It has also issued two sector guides for food & beverages and for the apparel sectors. Specific sector guides for more sectors will follow.

If your company is specifically or exclusively interested in understanding the financial impacts related to natural capital, then the Natural Capital Declaration (NCD) is developing a range of tools that directly integrates natural capital in credit risk analysis of loans and bonds, as well as in market valuations of companies listed on stock exchanges.

The basic premise of any of these tools is that they look in principle at costs and revenues, and how to embed these in standard financial metrics such as EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization).

A water risk tool target (equities) developed and released in 2015 by Bloomberg and the NCD enables financial professionals to gauge the extent to which water scarcity affects earnings and potentially the share price of mining stocks using a standard discounted cash flow model (DCF). It found for example in the case Antofagasta, a copper mining company, that the difference between free cash flow in a business-as-usual scenario in 2021 and when taking water risks into account, is about 40% or US$ 2.5 billion. This is large enough to affect equity value and the projected share price.

The NCD has also co-developed a water risk tool focused on corporate bonds. It found that water stress could have a significant impact on credit ratios. In the case of South African utility, Eskom, the model predicts that its debt/EBITDA ratio, (which is an important yardstick for the value and riskiness of corporate bonds), will almost triple if the full cost of its water use is internalized.

What these two tools have in common is that they are Excel-based, free to download from the internet, focus exclusively on the financial impacts of natural capital risks, and are customizable meaning that anyone can override the assumptions in the model and add new companies.

Nevertheless, this story is not only about risks and credit downgrades. There are major business opportunities for companies and investors that know how to turn a healthy profit in a world where resource scarcity is a reality and where greenhouse gas emissions need to get down fast, including in relation to forestry, agriculture and other land use.

The market for green bonds is rapidly expanding with close to US$ 700 billion of climate-aligned bonds outstanding in 2016 (of which US$ 118 specifically labelled green bonds). There are plans to issue the first green bond that would specifically finance commercially viable projects that have a positive effect on sustainable landscape management. This is being made possible thanks to a growing drive by consumer goods companies to work towards 'zero-net deforestation' commodity supply chains, effectively creating demand for private finance that leads to lower or zero-net forest impacts. As of June 2016, 579 companies had made pledges to remove forest destruction from their supply chain.

The UN-REDD Programme is also playing a very active role by supporting partner countries such as Panama, Costa Rica, Kenya and others to identify how the private sector can contribute to achieving REDD+ results.

The take away message is that changes in our natural environment - deforestation, water scarcity and greenhouse gas emissions building up in our atmosphere - are real and if left unaddressed will affect many businesses in a vast multitude of ways. On the other hand, those who are well prepared and know how to navigate changes in consumer and investor preferences related to natural capital, will be much better positioned to weather the storm.

Disclaimer: Articles in this series are submitted by people who work in organizations who are part of the Natural Capital Coalition, or people who are involved in the natural capital space more generally, the views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of The Natural Capital Coalition, other Coalition organizations, or the organization that employs the author.

Ivo Mulder has over ten years of professional experience working for UNEP, private consulting firms and with NGOs on building the business case for companies and governments to deal with challenges related to climate change, water scarcity and ecosystem management. He has published more than forty reports, blogs and articles.

Over the past two years, he has contributed to building the economic case for reduced deforestation and forest degradation as part of the UN-REDD Programme, including through economic valuation studies, fiscal policy analysis and outlining how businesses can decouple revenue growth from forest impacts. More recently, Ivo is involved in setting up new finance mechanisms with the aim of channelling private capital to activities that contribute to achieving REDD+ results.

Follow REDD+ on Twitter: @unredd

On 13th July 2016, The Natural Capital Coalition launched a standardized framework for business to identify, measure and value their impacts and dependencies on natural capital. This ' Natural Capital Protocol' has been developed through a unique collaborative process; a World Business Council for Sustainable Development consortium led on the technical development and an IUCN consortium led on business engagement and piloting. The Protocol is supported by practically focused 'Sector Guides' on Apparel and Food & Beverage produced by Trucost on behalf of Coalition.

Keep up to date with the Natural Capital Coalition on Twitter: @NatCapCoalition

Keep up to date with our series on natural capital here.

www.naturalcapitalcoalition.org

How Can SEO Be Used to Target Millennials

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) remains one of the most powerful ways to reach your target audience. But Google's changes have meant that ranking websites is based on the user experience each customer gets. This means companies have to change the way they do things. SEO is not just a case of throwing in a few keywords and links to sites.

I spoke to Arya Bina, Founder and CEO of Kobe Digital, to talk about how SEO can be used to target millennials, which is one of the hardest groups to hit.

AJ: Thank you for joining me today. Could you tell me more about Kobe Digital?

CEO: Kobe Digital is a company that caters to small and medium-sized businesses. We help them to reach their target audiences. We remain a small firm with a global reach. Our role as a boutique Los Angeles digital marketing firm enables us to give our clients the personalized services they want to conquer the most competitive industries.

AJ: Do you think millennials look at SEO differently than any other generation?

CEO: Millennials definitely view SEO differently. The main difference is that millennials perceive strong SEO to be a requirement for any company they do business with. They have grown up with the Internet and Google their whole lives, the first generation to do so, and finding a piece of information online has become second nature. They do the same when they want to find out more about a business.

For the vast majority of them, the Internet is the first place they look when learning more about a company and its products. Companies that have failed to make a strong online presence their top priority are practically invisible to millennials. They're as good as dead in the water.

AJ: As a boutique LA digital marketing firm, do you find most of your clients are from the local area?

CEO: We have found that the majority of small to medium-sized businesses enjoy working with local agencies. This is because we find that any cultural and logistical challenges are already understood by the agency. Our list of clients reflects this, and the majority of the businesses on this list are based in Southern California to enable this personalized approach.

But Kobe Digital is a national company and there have been many companies from across the country deciding to work with us after being referred. Los Angeles is one of the biggest and best creative hubs in the country, which is why top marketing talent tends to flock here which has enabled Kobe Digital to hire some of the top millennial talent .

AJ: What direction do you think SEO is taking now?

CEO: To us, it's clear that SEO is becoming the new reality when it comes to marketing. SEO has enabled companies to execute campaigns that are targeted, scalable, and measurable. That's the gold standard in advertising. With over 90% of online experiences beginning with a Google search, SEO is the clear choice for any company that wants to hit millennial audiences.

SEO is part of an environment that's dynamic and fast-flowing. It's difficult to predict which direction it will move in over the next few years. But targeted marketing services are sure to continue their relentless advance. Companies will be able to leverage granular data, including time spent on pages, search engine users' search histories, and bounce rates. To a large extent, we've already seen this transformation.

AJ: When marketing to millennials does SEO and/or Social have the stronger place?

CEO: It's easy to think that millennials share every detail on social media, therefore social media marketing is the future of online advertising. At Kobe Digital, we have found that this is true to a certain extent. A strong social media marketing campaign is one of the most effective tools for building your brand and engaging with your customers.

But when it comes to introducing your company's products and services to new demographics, SEO is the best way to increase your visibility. Search engine users are far more likely than social media users to convert. 72% of people who perform a local search will visit the closest store to them. 61% of local searches also lead to a purchase.

Those are numbers social media marketing has yet to reach.

Conclusion - SEO is More Important than Ever

SEO is more important than ever before and there's no doubt that it's a cornerstone for reaching millennials. SEO might have been changed, but it's not going to disappear anytime soon. Companies that fail to invest in SEO are going to be at a crippling disadvantage. And there are no signs of this changing anytime soon as SEO becomes more targeted and more affordable.

What do you think is the most important benefit of SEO?

Big Banks Won’t Say If They Use The Same Scheme That Led To Wells Fargo’s Fraud

The four biggest banks in the U.S. won’t say whether they offer workers the same kind of sales incentives that drove Wells Fargo employees to open millions of accounts for customers without their knowledge.

That scam led to a record-setting fine, congressional hearings and a rare case in which a bank CEO was forced to give up a few million dollars in compensation, with legislators calling for his ouster. California recently announced it would no longer do business with the bank, and Illinois is expected to follow with its own announcement on Monday.

Representatives from Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and US Bank declined to respond when The Huffington Post asked them if they use the same high-pressure, lofty sales quotas that pushed underpaid Wells Fargo employees to rip off customers in an effort to keep their jobs or earn bonuses to enhance their low hourly pay. Along with Wells Fargo, these banks are the five largest in the country, ranked by total assets.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Many are demanding Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf step down in light of the scandal. So far, he is being forced to give up some of his pay.

No one has accused these institutions of pulling off a fraud like Wells Fargo’s. The bank was fined $185 million for the widespread behavior.

Yet it’s notable that none of the banks contacted by HuffPost would be forthcoming about practices within their bank, even as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a stern warning to financial institutions to carefully monitor sales practices to prevent a Wells-like debacle. 

JP Morgan Chase, for instance, declined to talk about incentives and instead referred HuffPost to a press release about its plans to raise bank teller pay to $16 an hour in some high-cost cities.

The CFPB has said it’s investigating other banks to see if the practice is going on there.

Pressuring bank workers to “cross-sell” customers ― industry jargon for convincing them to sign on for more products like credit cards, bank accounts and loans ― is a common practice at U.S. banks, Christman reported in a detailed analysis NELP released this summer.

Indeed, there are signals that Wells Fargo isn’t alone with its fake account problem. Consumers have reported problems with unauthorized credit card openings at other banks since at least 2015. The CFPB has received 638 complaints from people who said they received credit cards they did not ask for since January of that year, according to an analysis the S&P Global Market Intelligence released last week. Just 28 of those complaints were directed at Wells Fargo; 31 were for Bank of America; 59 were about JPMorgan Chase and 83 complaints regarded Citi.

“Those banks that don’t do this [sales incentives] are happy to say so,” Anastasia Christman, a policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, told HuffPost.

That none of these banks were willing to talk about their practices is perhaps a sign of extreme caution in the wake of the penalties levied on Wells Fargo. The bank was forced to pay $185 million in fines earlier this month, including a record $100 million penalty levied by the CFPB. 

At the time, CFPB Director Richard Cordray put the banking industry on notice.

“This was outrageous conduct. It was a violation of trust and an abuse of trust. It should not have happened, and I guarantee you that we will be seeing that it does not happen again at any bank,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “We will be looking for these types of problems.”

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

CFPB Director Richard Cordray has said other banks should carefully look at their incentive systems to ensure a Wells Fargo-like scam doesn't happen.

Bank workers interviewed for the NELP report talked about the immense pressure to sell more products to customers, who often not only didn’t need a new credit card ― but would likely face financial harm from one.

“If someone’s getting married, tell them to get a credit card. Any life event that happened, you were supposed to say, ‘Get a credit card for it.’ If you heard kids in the background, the answer was a credit card,” a Rhode Island Bank of America service specialist told the organization.

The comprehensive analysis was based in part on interviews with 75 workers currently or recently employed by seven major banks ― including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and US Bank. It was released the month before news of Wells Fargo’s fine broke.

The pressure on workers is amplified by the fact that they’re low-paid. The average wage for a bank teller is around $12 an hour. A stunning 70 percent of the lowest-paid bank workers are women. 

Nearly one-third of bank tellers’ families use public benefits ― including food stamps and Medicaid ― according to a 2014 report from the University of California, Berkeley.

One banker reported signing her sister up for a credit card that she didn’t really understand. “She maxed it out, and she still has that maxed-out credit card 10 years later,” this banker told NELP.

A U.S. Bank collection worker said: “There was a constant battle of how you do right for the customer without sacrificing, you know, not paying a light bill or having shoes for the kids going back to school. You can’t make that sacrifice.”

Amalgamated Bank, a small New York-based union-owned bank, is one of the few financial institutions to publicly disclose it does not use sales quotas or incentive pay for cross-selling. The bank announced last year it would pay its workers at least $15 an hour.

Until recently, Amalgamated did offer bonuses to branch managers for reaching certain goals in opening accounts, but the bank plans to discontinue the practice at year’s end.

“We don’t want to have any shred of doubt in our consumers’ minds that we are watching out for their best interests,” Amalgamated CEO Keith Mestrich told HuffPost. He said tellers at Amalgamated often make far more than $15 an hour.

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Union-owned Amalgamated Bank says it doesn't have the quotas or incentive systems that other banks employ.

But Mestrich’s bank isn’t public and under the same pressure to increase its bottom line as the largest banks. In the wake of the financial crisis, the nation’s biggest banks have increasingly relied on fees from consumer accounts to keep bringing in money. 

“We don’t know if this is going on at other banks,” Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, told HuffPost. “We do know that cross-selling products at all the banks is both a priority and highly incentivized and must be policed with care and diligence or we will see more scandals like this.”

“The banks make massive amounts of money in selling their own products to their customer base,” Kelleher said.

For years, low-paid Wells Fargo tellers and customer service representatives were under enormous pressure to cross-sell. These workers, who typically made about $12 an hour, were offered bonuses for reaching their quotas. Some were warned they could be fired for not meeting these aggressive sales goals. The bank said it wanted to sell each customer eight products ― “eight is great!” Wells Fargo said publicly of its cross-selling efforts.

Faced with that kind of pressure, thousands of workers created fake accounts for customers. More than 2 million sham accounts were created, causing all kinds of consternation for customers ― extra fees, lower credit scores, calls from debt collectors on accounts these people did not know existed. And Wells Fargo fired 5,300 bankers for engaging in the practice. It’s not known how many other bankers were fired for not meeting the aggressive quotas.

Black Women Are Leaning In And Getting Nowhere

Black women want a seat at the table. And yet they are close to invisible at the highest ranks of corporate America, reveals data released Tuesday morning by consulting firm McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org, the nonprofit women’s leadership organization founded by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. 

This is the second year the organization has released the data, among the most comprehensive looks at how women are faring in the business world.

Overall, it’s not going terribly well. Women drop out of the corporate pipeline at high rates: For every 100 women promoted to manager (the first step on the track up the ladder), 130 men are advanced, the study found. Women get more pushback when they negotiate for raises, and are more likely to get labeled pushy or bossy by the higher-ups and generally receive less support from senior colleagues.

But women of color have it particularly bad, the study found. 

Defined as black, Asian or Hispanic, women of color make up just 3 percent of executives in the C-suite at the 132 North American companies surveyed, which include JP Morgan Chase, Procter & Gamble, General Motors and Facebook. Yet, these women comprise 20 percent of the United States population.

White women were also nowhere near parity in those high-level offices, but at 17 percent are doing much better by comparison.

“When women are stuck, corporate America is stuck,” Sandberg said in a statement. “We know that diverse teams perform better and inclusive workplaces are better for all employees, so we all have strong incentives to get this right.”

LeanIn.org

Women of color are far less likely to make it to the top in corporate America.

“Women of color are the most underrepresented group in the corporate pipeline,” write the authors of the report, which also surveyed women within these companies.

This is the second year that LeanIn.org and McKinsey have done this landmark survey. Though last year some data on women of color was included, the report did not break out pipeline data on women of color. 

The latest study looked at promotion and attrition rates at the various companies, which together employ more than 4.6 million people. Additionally, more than 34,000 employees at the companies responded to a survey on gender biases, work-life issues and career opportunities at their companies.

Women of color who responded to the survey, especially black women, tended to perceive their offices as less fair. Only 29 percent of black women said the best opportunities at their company go to the most deserving employees, compared to 47 percent of white women, 43 percent of Asian women and 41 percent of Hispanic women.

“This study makes clear that while all women remain underrepresented in the corporate pipeline, women of color face the steepest drop-offs,” LeanIn.org president Rachel Thomas said. 

When Sandberg’s corporate feminist manifesto Lean In came out in 2013, one of the most potent criticisms of the best-seller involved race. Many said the book, which urges women to speak up and be more ambitious at work, was less relevant for women of color, who face different challenges at the office.

Sandberg famously wrote that many women were giving up on attaining leadership roles in corporate America before their careers even took off. Women “leave before they leave,” she wrote, echoing a widely viewed TED Talk she gave in 2010. Essentially, the argument goes, women anticipate that they won’t be able to have full-throttle careers because at some point marriage and children will intercede. So they deliberately hold themselves back.

This may be a specific problem of white women, however. Women of color, according to surveys and plenty of anecdotal evidence, are far more ambitious. Indeed, black women participate in the labor market at higher rates than any other group of women.

While white women seem to struggle with whether or not to seek advancement at work, black women are far less ambiguous, according to a 2014 survey from the Center for Talent Innovation.

“In our research, we find black women are nearly 3 times more likely than white women to say they aspire to a powerful job with a prestigious title,” Tai Wingfield, one of the report’s authors and senior vice president of communications for the Center for Talent Innovation and managing director at Hewlett Consulting Partner, told The Huffington Post. 

In this year’s LeanIn.org survey, 48 percent of women of color said they aspire to leadership positions at their company, compared with 37 percent of white women. The difference is most stark at the entry level, where only 27 percent of white women aspire to be a top executive, compared with 41 percent of women of color.

Yet it’s white women who are far more likely to land top roles. After Xerox chairman and CEO Ursula Burns leaves her post this year, there will be no black women CEOs in the Fortune 500, noted Melinda Marshall and Wingfield in a recent piece for Harvard Business Review.

“The problem is leadership isn’t seeing them ― those qualified, well educated black women who are vying for leadership but are being overlooked,” Wingfield told HuffPost.

“Black women are already ‘leaning in,’” Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, a psychology professor at Columbia University, wrote last year in a fascinating piece for Fortune on black female leadership.

Steve Marcus / Reuters

Xerox chairman and CEO Ursula Burns is seen at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Jan. 11, 2012. The company refers to Burns as "chairman" rather than "chairwoman."

Part of the problem is “invisibility,” Purdie-Vaughns writes. When the average person thinks of a “woman leader,” she argues, the image that comes to mind is a white woman ― like Sandberg. If you picture a black leader, you’re more likely to think of a black man than a black woman.

“Because black women are not seen as typical of the categories ‘black’ or ‘woman,’ people’s brains fail to include them in both categories,” Purdie-Vaughns writes. “Black women suffer from a ‘now you see them now you don’t’ effect in the workplace.”

In Wingfield’s study, black women tell painful stories of how this plays at the office. One woman, after asking her boss about new opportunities at her firm, was told to be happy with what she’s achieved. “You’ve reached a milestone you’ve probably never imagined,” he tells her. “Do we really need to talk about what you haven’t yet achieved?” 

Yvette Miley, a senior executive at MSNBC, describes her experiences in the 1990s speaking up at editorial meetings only to see her ideas get ignored until a male colleague repeated it and had the buy-in of the room.

What seems clear is that the managers and executives who make decisions about promotions and advancement may have unconsciously absorbed some of these stereotypes and are holding back women of color.

And to make things even tougher, many companies aren’t very focused on racial diversity to begin with. According to LeanIn.org’s numbers, 55 percent of companies say racial diversity is a top priority. Gender diversity gets far more attention, with 78 percent of companies saying they’ve made it a top goal.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that more than 34,000 women answered survey questions as part of LeanIn.org and McKinsey’s new report. In fact, both men and women participated in the survey.