SHARE RECLAIMS the LOST YEAR

During the period that SHARE and the hospital were negotiating the current contract, new-hires to SHARE positions were mistakenly credited with one year less credit than they should have been. After a too-long period working have the error corrected, those SHARE employees are finally getting their pay righted. Each one will receive a small raise to correct the miscalculation, plus all of the retro back to January 1, 2012.

KEEP IT CLEAN

Did you know that yesterday was Global Handwashing Day, “an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap and water at critical times?” Did you know that one trillion germs can live in one gram of poop?

NATIONAL MAMMOGRAPHY DAY

Today is National Mammography Day, and we’d like to appreciate SHARE members in the Mammography departments at UMass Memorial. You can learn more about breast cancer, and about how to create your own early detection program, through the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

BEWARE the HAPPINESS INDUSTRY?

One running theme on this blog has been about the concept of happiness: how we can make work more enjoyable, strategies for reducing stress, etc. In the interest of addressing the subject more thoroughly, here’s William Davies cautioning an audience to be wary of what he calls “the happiness agenda.”

RELIEF from STUDENT LOAN DEBT

SHARE members with student-loan debt are not alone in their uphill efforts to pay off schooling costs. If you’re currently considering further education, it can be hard to make sense of all of your options, but it will be worth your while to minimize the problem of debt by making informed borrowing decisions from the outset, including from your college’s advisors (or, for a free online alternative, check out collegepoint.info).

One of the most frustrating realities of the situation is that many debt-relief funds go unspent because those who need them don’t know how to find them. Many graduates don’t realize, for example, that some jobs could make them more likely to qualify for federal loan forgiveness than others, particularly community service jobs such as those in hospitals and schools. Until college is free, we’ll keep reporting out information about education funds for SHARE members.

See you here next Friday! Don't forget to wash your hands. Hope you have a great weekend.