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.

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.

Why This VC Says We're Not In Another Dot-Com Bubble

The Nasdaq hit at a 15-year high on Thursday, fueling fresh speculation that the stock market is experiencing another dot-com bubble like the one of the 1990s that could burst at any time.

Not so, says venture capitalist Tony Tjan.

“You’re definitely in a very significant boom period,” the bespectacled managing director of the Boston-based VC firm Cue Ball Capital told The Huffington Post on Thursday. “But you’re not in a bubble.”

To be sure, Tjan has skin in the game. Cue Ball Capital's portfolio is filled with tech companies, including the commenting service Livefyre, legal data firm Lex Machina and the real estate analytics site SmartZip.

It is tempting for financial pundits to compare today’s market to that of 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst, sending stock prices plummeting and closing down some prominent early Internet companies, such as pet supply site Pets.com, web hosting service GeoCities and plaything retailer eToys.com

Back then, the ratio of a companies' stock price to earnings soared on sheer speculation that growth would continue -- but investors ignored P/E ratio as a usual metric of a company’s financial health.

“It’s high, but it’s a fraction of what that [was],” Tjan said of ratios today.

When it came to initial public offerings back in 2000, Wall Street was so confident in the future success of unproven companies, that 80 percent of firms that went public in 2000 didn’t even turn profits, according to CNN Money. There are companies with frothy valuations, but fewer and fewer are going public. To the extent that there is a new tech boom, it's among private companies, not those listed on the Nasdaq.

Today, the global market has more than 20 so-called “unicorns” -- venture capital-backed companies valued at over $1 billion -- including Uber, Chinese cellphone maker Xiaomi and the ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, according to Cue Ball. But none of these has gone public. And the rate of IPOs is far lower. In 2000, 446 companies went public, compared to 275 last year. So far this year, 45 companies have gone public, according to the market research firm Renaissance Capital.

Eventually, some of these companies will likely see their values drop as a natural part of the market correction, Tjan said.

“There are ones that will be significantly corrected or go out of business,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s nearly the same.”

Perhaps the biggest difference between 2000 and now is that most companies today build business models off actual necessities, not just “bets on novelty,” Tjan said.

“Back then, you’d have companies trying to do everything as crazy as sell 99-cent pet food in a $20 FedEx box and think that was a good business,” he said with a laugh. “You have a greater rationality and maturation of the business models, and a greater understanding of what’s going on.”

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, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday.

The move comes a day 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.

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice and Time Warner Cable spokesman Bobby Amirshahi both declined to comment. But Bloomberg reported that a formal announcement of the terminated deal would come by Friday.

The 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. market.

The reportedly 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 net neutrality -- the idea that broadband providers “cannot block, throttle, or create special ‘fast lanes’” for any Internet content.

This story has been updated. Simon McCormack contributed reporting.

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 AMC series “Mad Men.”

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

(This version of the story corrects HBO to AMC in the second-to-last paragraph)