Kaiser Permanente Reaches Pact With Unions

Bloomberg — Kaiser Permanente reached a tentative agreement with unions, averting what could have been the largest strike yet this year. The averted strike would have involved more than 30,000 workers from nurses and pharmacists to janitors and locksmiths.

The health-care company reached the agreement on a four-year contract covering 50,000 employees in 22 local unions, the Alliance of Health Care Unions said in a joint statement Saturday.

Workers were planning to walk out of hospitals across mostly the U.S. West Coast on Monday morning, a move that could have disrupted a health-care system recovering from the damage of the Covid-19 pandemic and as U.S. hospitals confront a new wave of infections heading into the winter.

“These were challenging negotiations…

How the Pandemic Forced Japan to Rethink Its Work Culture

Meditation is the art of consciously zoning in on the unconscious. Take breathing as an example. Only when you focus on inhaling and exhaling do you realize that you usually breathe unconsciously. Similarly, the pandemic made us realize that things we do unconsciously each day can no longer be taken for granted.

This is also true in the workplace. Before the pandemic, it was second nature to come into the office and meet people face to face. But that all changed as the safety of our people and clients became our top priority and we had to look for new ways of doing things. Through a process of trial and error, we realized that we could operate remotely. Of course, digital tools and the efforts of our people played a huge part in making this possible. Indeed, changes that would nor…

King Charles Coronation- Money Printer De La Rue Hits Low

(Bloomberg) — De La Rue Plc shares fell to a record low as the company that’s reprinting UK money following the accession of King Charles III warned that demand for banknotes is the weakest in 20 years.

The stock fell as much as 34% in early London trading after the firm said adjusted operating profit for the fiscal year just ended would miss analyst estimates by “a mid-single digit percentage.” Trading volume swelled to 3.9 million shares, more than 20 times the three-month daily average.

The plunge is the second in four months for De La Rue, which cited a surge in input costs such as energy for a November profit warning.

Read More: Why There’s No Crown on the New King Charles Stamps

Wednesday’s drop …