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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Hey, there. It's Shumita here. Every so often, we're gonna recommend a show that we think is worth your time. This week, I want to tell you about "The Envelope," an entertainment podcast from the "LA Times." It's a deep-dive interview show where A-list actors, directors and showrunners share intimate stories about what fuels their art.
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Jennifer Coolidge: I could hear my parents talking about me and they were just like, "Oh, my God. What are we gonna do?" You know? "What's gonna become of her?"
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Hear exclusive stories that you won't find anywhere else. Listen and subscribe to "The Envelope" at latimes.com/envelopepodcast or on Apple Podcasts.
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Good morning! It's Thursday, December 1st. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, migrant workers who helped build World Cup stadiums want compensation for the grueling and sometimes deadly labor, the weird economic psychology around whether the U.S. is headed for a recession, and new data makes a strong case for four-day workweeks.
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But first, a look inside the fight to stop a major rail strike. It's one that puts Biden, and Democrats, in an unusual position: on the opposite side of some union members. There's been a lot of back and forth on this for months, so it's worth a quick catch-up. Union workers and rail companies were in tough talks earlier this year. The Biden administration helped broker a deal that boosted workers' pay and capped their health premiums. Most of the unions that represent rail workers signed on, but a few unions rejected it, saying they want more, especially paid sick leave. So now, we're looking at new threats of a rail shutdown, because if one rail union strikes, they all do.
"Politico" takes us inside the Biden administration's decision to ask Congress to step in against the strike. Biden has a strong pro-union reputation, and blocking a strike risks angering his labor allies. But two factors played into his decision. One was the threat to the broader economy and threat to jobs, including many union members'. The administration also felt that it's better to have a Democratic-run Congress act now rather than have unions take their chances with a less sympathetic GOP-controlled House next year. Congressional Democrats went along with Biden, passing a bill to block the strike in the House. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to move fast, too…
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Chuck Schumer: Leader McConnell and I both want to pass it quickly. We understand the time deadlines, and we'll be working together to figure out the best way to get it done quickly.
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The unions that are still not on board are critical that Biden backed a deal that doesn't grant them paid sick days. The rail companies say workers have vacation time that they can use when they're sick. Michael Baldwin, who's one of the rail union presidents, told CNN this week why that wasn't enough for his members.
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Michael Baldwin: This became a glaring issue during the pandemic when we had members who were forced by their employer or the railroads to stay home and quarantine without pay. But really, it comes down to simple things like the flu for a day or two, or a sick child and the ability to take a day or two paid when you have to deal with these issues that life brings that you have no control over.
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The House did pass a separate bill that would provide seven days of paid sick leave, but it's not expected to pass the Senate.
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Working in scorching heat up to 122 degrees. Moving concrete blocks for 16 hours a day. Seeing coworkers getting sick, fainting, or, in some cases, dying on the job. These are some of the conditions that migrant workers told "USA TODAY" they experienced in Qatar building the stadiums and infrastructure for this year's World Cup. Now, thousands of workers and families of people who died are asking the country and FIFA for compensation. Reporter Grace Hauck spoke to some of them.
Grace Hauck: There has been a push by a coalition of human rights groups as well as some trade unions and fans to get FIFA to set up a $440 million compensation fund. That's the equivalent of prize money that will be distributed at the World Cup. And for context, FIFA estimates seven billion in revenue to come from the game. So that's really a drop in the bucket.
Qatar has already paid out at least $350 million in unpaid wages.
Hauck: But many human rights groups, migrants, say that's not enough. That's just unpaid wages. That doesn't account for all the other human rights and labor violations.
Qatar has only acknowledged a small number of migrant deaths, but human rights groups estimate that thousands of people have died. Workers had very little power to complain about poor conditions once they arrived in the country.
Hauck: Migrant workers had their passports confiscated upon arrival, they couldn't change or quit their jobs without permission, protesting and unionizing was prohibited, workers needed an exit visa approved by their employer to leave the country. And many human rights groups have said this is kind of a system akin to slavery or indentured servitude.
<v The U.S. Soccer Federation is backing a compensation fund for migrant workers. But it's not clear how much FIFA will do. It has signaled it's open to a fund and says it has advocated for workers. But at times, FIFA's president dismissed criticism of Qatar, at one point saying he wants the focus to be on the sport. One former worker told "USA TODAY" that FIFA should live up to its motto>fair play.
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The U.S. economy is such a weird cocktail of contradictory things right now. You can see the mix in this week's news. New data shows a drop in job openings, but the labor market is still red-hot, with way more empty positions than workers to fill them. Stock markets rallied yesterday when Fed chair Jay Powell said the fight against high inflation seems to be going well enough that the Fed may start making smaller rate hikes. But he also talked about the risk of a recession.
<v Central bankers and Wall Street traders play a big role in whether the economy keeps growing or tumbles into recession. But ordinary people do, too. If you break GDP down, you wind up with millions of tiny decisions>whether a shopper buys a little something extra or saves that money, whether a small business invests money to expand or holds back. "Washington Post" economics reporter Rachel Siegel recently wrote about how consumers and business owners are handling all these mixed signals and fears of recession. She told us about some people who feel okay about where things are right now. One person she spoke to owns a furniture company.
Rachel Siegel: Things for his own business are actually very good. He's expecting a decent holiday. Black Friday went really well. But he'll sit around and talk to friends, and they're all really nervous about this looming recession, and he'll say, "Why are you complaining? Things are actually looking pretty good for us right now."
And yet, for some people who have good jobs and money in the bank, there's still this sense of dread. Siegel says that's partly because it's hard to ignore how expensive things are right now.
Siegel: Inflation just levels a really heavy dose of anxiety because it's entirely unclear where the economy is headed, how stable the economy will be, if people will keep their jobs, if there's going to be a recession.
<v But consumer-spending numbers have stayed relatively strong, including blockbuster Black Friday sales last week. There's an economics concept to describe this mismatch of being down on the economy but not acting like it>secondhand pessimism.
Siegel: The idea behind that is that the economy might seem very bad, or people might be anxious and worried about where the economy is headed, but they aren't changing their behavior as a result. So, for example, you might have people who say it really seems like a recession is around the corner, but they're still spending, they're still going on vacation, they're still eating out.
People tend to think of economists as cold, hard number crunchers, but they understand that the economy is about feelings, too. They track data on how optimistic or pessimistic consumers feel because it can signal how they'll spend. So the question of whether we will slip into a recession in America might come down to people who are doing okay in this economy, the ones who can afford to keep spending as long as they can shake the feeling that something is off.
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<v If you are the person at the water cooler who likes to casually bring up successful four-day workweek models, you've got some exciting new data to work with. It's from the first large-scale study of its kind. Thirty-three companies took on this experiment to go from five workdays to four. Over a ten-month period, they reported higher revenue and better worker productivity and attendance. Turnover dropped, and all of them say they're convinced>they're not going back to the five-day system.
<v This study was coordinated by a nonprofit called 4 Day Week Global. And as you can guess from that name, it is an advocacy group. But the hard data has many skeptical managers thinking twice. And research is continuing around the world to see if four-day weeks are sustainable in the long term. If you're feeling a bit of schedule envy hearing all of this, check out this "Bloomberg" article, and maybe you can take the advice of the headline>"Want a Four-Day Work Week? Show This Research to Your Boss."
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You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app, don't go anywhere. We've got a narrated article coming up next from "WIRED." It's about hibernation, how animals do it in nature, and whether humans could find a way to do it for long-term space travel. That's it. That's all I'm gonna tell you. So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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