AAWA

  AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S AGENDA EDUCATION FOUNDATION

I Am Woman, Hear Me...

MONITOR NOTES  (July 2003)

DECISION MAKING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

• The Labor Department has launched two online tools to help small businesses comply with labor law, such as the Family Medical leave Act.  FirstStep Employment Law Advisor, available at www.dol.gov/elaws, helps employers figure out which laws apply to them and how to follow them. (6/3 PD)

• Optimism among small-business owners has rebounded since the end of the war with Iraq, according to a nationwide poll on behalf to the Network of City Business Journal (6/4 PD)

• Ohio small business owners can offer advice or suggestions to the Governor’s Small Business Advisory Council at GSBAC@odod.state.oh.us.  The advisory council is seeking input on several issues, including reducing state regulations and reporting red tape. (6/5 PD)

• The Downtown Merchants association is handing out a new discount card called Shop Cleveland, that entitles holders to discounts and special promotions at more than 200 participating retailers, restaurants and other organizations, from graphic design firms to dentist’s office.  The cards are free to anyone who signs up at the information booths of Tower City Center or the Galleria at Erieview.

• The company that owns eight House of Blues clubs across the country has signed a letter of intent with local developer MRN Ltd.  The Los Angeles-based company is to rent about 30,000 square feet in the old Woolworth’s building at East 4^th.  Construction of the club is to begin this fall. (6/7 PD)

EDUCATION

• The jobs of 52 assistant principals and 172 teachers in the Cleveland schools are being cut to save the district from an impending financial crisis.  At the same time, school officials say a hefty tax increase still will be needed in 2004 (6/18 PD)

• A divided Supreme Court, issuing its most important pronouncement on affirmative action in a quarter-century ruled that colleges may continue to use race as a factor in admissions but must carefully limit how they do so.  (6/24 PD

• A compromise budget bill that will scale back planned increases in aid to schools could plunge the state back into court over the way it pays for public education.  Less that five weeks after Ohio’s 12 year-old school-funding lawsuit officially ended, a coalition of more that 500 school districts said yesterday that it expects to return to court – this time either the U.S. Supreme court or another federal court. (6/21 PD

• The lottery fell more that $31 million short of its goal to send $672.7 million to the Ohio Department of Education. (PD

EMPLOYMENT

•  Union members at six former Bethlehem Steel plants have ratified a labor agreement with the plants’ new owners, Cleveland’s International Steel Group.  The contract in place until September 2008, is the same one covering ISG workers in Cleveland and elsewhere. It includes quarterly profit sharing and hourly wages from $15 to $20.50. (6/17 PD)

• Some 360,000 people were added to the jobless rolls in June, as the nation posted its highest unemployment rate in more than nine years- 6.4 percent, up from 6.1 percent in May.  Manufacturing led in payroll cuts falling by 56,000 jobs last month. (7/4 PD)

• May department stores Co. has laid off about 1,500 workers.  That’s about 1.3 percent of its 116,000 workers.  The company has 447 department stores, including Kaufmann’s and Lord & Taylor. (PD)

•  About 860 workers spent their last day on the Boeing Co. payroll yesterday, and the company handed out 60-day notices to 845 more employees.  Boeing has cut 33,890 jobs under a payroll reduction plan that started in December 2001. (PD)

HEALTH

• Canada’s lone case of mad cow disease may have originated in the United States, according to a report by Canadian investigators, who have been unable to pinpoint the source of the infection. (7/4 PD)

• Health experts struggling to lower disease rates among black men are promoting a simple preventive strategy: eat more fruits and vegetables.  Compared to other groups, black men suffer at high rates from numerous deadly conditions including cancers, heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes.  The reasons for these health imbalances are complex and under debate, but nutritionist concur that black men’s tendency to eat fewer disease-preventing vegetables and fruits is an important factor. (7/5 PD)

• The Justice Department has accused the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals of illegally billing Medicare for millions of dollars to cover the cost of experimental heart devices. (7/2 PD)

HOUSING

• At East 125 Street and Phillips Avenue, in East Cleveland, ground has been broken for the first of 40 new houses. (PD)

• The number of U.S. homeowners behind on their mortgages declined in the first quarter but the number in foreclosures increased slightly. (PD)

• 26 people are buying their homes this year from the Cleveland Housing Network Inc. after completing the nonprofit organization’s 15 year-old lease-purchase program.  The new homeowners are the first to take title to homes developed with money raised from the sale of federal low-income housing tax credits. (7/5 PD)

SENIOR CITIZENS

• Buried deep inside the hundreds of pages of the Senate’s Medicare bill is a provision requiring Medicare patients to pay 20 percent of the cost of their clinical lab work, such as blood tests and urinalysis.  Some physicians predicted many of their patients would be unable to pay the new fees and wouldn’t get the tests they need. (7/2 PD)

CRIME

• Nearly half of the FBI agents who once handled drug cases are now concentrating on the fight against terrorism, a shift that has caused concern in Congress about a possible lack of attention to other crime problems. (6/19 PD

• Routine racial and ethnic profiling will be banned at all 70 federal agencies with law enforcement powers under a Justice Department directive, but critics say exceptions to the new policy could still permit profiling.  (6/18 PD)

Cleveland’s Secret Service Office will house an Electronic Crimes Task Force chapter.  The task force was created through the USA Patriot Act, giving the Secret Service additional jurisdiction over computer crimes.  (6/17 PD)

Last modified: 08/25/05