Tidbit Time: Week of February 8, 2016

Happy Heart Month! As in, happy Valentine’s. And, more importantly, Heart Health Awareness Month. Here’s our latest roundup of tidbits from our community and the worlds of academia, healthcare, and unions . . .

SUPPORTING FAMILIES and FRIENDS of WORCESTER PATIENTS

One former SHARE member, Nancy Whalen, the President of Healing Heart Hospitality House, has just let us know about an upcoming dinner with real heart. And you’re invited! “Our mission is to help families of patients traveling more than 30 miles to be with their loved ones hospitalized in the Worcester area by providing a suite of services that offers emotional and spiritual support and comfort,” Nancy writes. “Just recently a very generous person has offered to buy us a house. After 10 years of working towards this goal, we are excited beyond words. Pub 99 is sponsoring our fundraiser by donating 15% of food purchased on Tuesday, February 9th when anyone presents the voucher from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.”

You can print your own voucher by right-clicking the above image. Save it to your computer, and you can print it from there.

GOING RED for HEART HEALTH

Heart disease and stroke cause 1 in 3 deaths among women each year, killing approximately one woman every 80 seconds.  Fortunately, we can change that because 80 percent of cardiac and stroke events may be prevented with education and action. On Friday, February 5th, many SHARE members participated in National Wear Red Day, wearing red and working to raise research funds and awareness about women's heart health. 

Go Red Raffle in the University Cafeteria

The American Heart Association provides this guide to Well-Woman Visits so that you can schedule, prepare for, and understand the kinds of physician visits that will help you protect your own heart health, and encourage other women to do the same.

SOME GOOD NEWS for the MIDDLE CLASS

The number of union members in the US held steady from 2014 to 2015, according to the annual Department of Labor report on the subject.  Studies show that increased union membership strengthens the middle class.

HEARTS ARE AMAZING

Did you know that the blue whale has the largest heart, weighing in at 1,500 pounds? Or that your heart will beat about 100,000 times today? That will add up to over a million barrels of blood during an average lifetime.

NOT GETTING UPDATES? A TIP for KEEPING on TOP of SHARE NEWS

If you haven't already signed up to receive blog updates by email, you can do so by entering your address in the box in the top right corner of this screen. Also: for those of you who have signed up, but aren't getting updates, make sure to check your inbox--or your spam filter--for a verification email. When you sign up, you'll get an email from "Feedburner Email Subscriptions" asking you to click on the included link; this will activate your email subscription. If you have difficulties, please email kirk.davis@theshareunion.org.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that things are off to a very good start for you this week. See you here next time . . .

Tidbit Time: Week of January 25, 2016

Welcome back! These tidbits are starting to add up. Speaking of adding up . . .

MORE PARTICIPANTS, EASIER WORK

“Many hands make light work” has become a fairly well-known aphorism. The phrase can be attributed to the English playwright John Heywood, who wrote during the sixteenth century. The idea can also be found in many other languages around the world. A related Tanzanian proverb says, “Two ants do not fail to pull one grasshopper.”

ONE BILLION ACTS of PEACE

Here, Chade-Meng Tan explains how cooperation can change the world, in describing a project undertaken by Tibetan students in India that is doing just that.

JANUARY IS NATIONAL BLOOD-DONOR MONTH

The Blood Donor Center at UMass Memorial accepts the important gift of blood year-round, and January is a great time to resolve to give. Blood is required for a number of medical conditions, including, of course, transplants, cancers, and traumatic injuries. UMass Memorial uses about 31,000 blood products each year to meet the needs of patients. The Blood Donor Center is located on the University Campus, downstairs from the Emergency Department. Walk-ins are welcome for whole-blood donations, or to schedule an appointment, please call 508-421-1950. To find other locations to give, visit the Red Cross website.  

LEARN IT and KEEP IT

In his book Outliers, writer Malcolm Gladwell develops the idea that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. Many critics and studies have worked to debunk this theory. Author and podcaster Tim Ferriss aspires to teach readers how to be world-class performers in a fraction of that time. But how long does it take to lose a skill? HopesandDreams recently spoke with several leading experts to find out the answer.

BUT HOW MANY LICKS DOES IT TAKE to GET to the CENTER of a TIDBIT?

A tidbit is, as Merrium-Webster tells us, “a choice or interesting bit (as of information),” or “a small piece of news or information.” Outside of the US and Canada, the preferred spelling is “titbit.” Obviously the word also often refers to a select little piece of food, and grammarist.com tells us that “the first syllable likely comes from the archaic colloquialism tid, meaning tender.”

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that things are off to a very good start for you this week. See you here next time . . .

Tidbit Time: week of January 18th, 2016

Good morning! And happy Martin Luther King Day! In 2016, we’re making some changes to our weekly blogging experiment, formerly “Five Tidbit Friday.” We’ll continue to collect an array of news items, but we’ll be posting them, in various quantities, at the beginning of the week. This week, we’ve got a nice batch, beginning with . . .

28th REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. TRIBUTE at UMass CELEBRATES SERVICE

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is," asserted Dr. Martin Luther King, "'What are you doing for others?'" On this MLK Day holiday, we remember Dr. King, and renew our thinking on this persistent and urgent question.

All members of the UMass community have been invited to this year's tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, where Rev. Liz Walker, pastor of Roxbury Presbyterian Church and the first black woman to co-anchor a newscast in Boston, will be delivering the keynote address on the subject of service.  RSVP or email DIO@umassmed.edu to register for the event, taking place on Wednesday, Jan. 20, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Faculty Conference Room on the University campus, with lunch available at 11:30 a.m.

An ENGLISH HOSPITAL SAVED by BEAUTY, CREATIVITY, and COLLECTIVE ACTION

Near the end of last year, and “across the pond,” as they say, hospital workers and community members responded with real inspiration to a political decision that would have shut down Lewisham and Greenwich Hospital in southeast London. Members of the National Health Service choir there recorded and released "A Bridge over You," a mashup of "Bridge over Troubled Water" by Simon & Garfunkel, and Coldplay’s “Fix You.” The song became the centerpiece of a campaign to save the hospital.

As a result, the English came out in support of their healthcare workers. “A Bridge over You” reached number one on the UK singles chart at Christmas 2015, selling more than 127,000 copies. (Justin Bieber, whose song “Love Yourself” was expected to be number one on the charts during the spike in record sales at Christmas, even tweeted his support for the cause.)  

The song, the singers, and the video of these caregivers with their patients is quite an inspiration. Give it a listen?

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS about MARTIN LUTHER KING

The civil rights leader we celebrate today was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son. And did you know that the    young Martin Luther Jr. entered college at age fifteen?

BIG BROTHER and the WARMTH-DETECTORS

There’s more interesting work-related news from the UK this week.  Buzzfeed recently reported that, “The Daily Telegraph has installed devices to monitor whether journalists are at their desks.” These small boxes were mounted beneath the employees’ desks, and detected heat and motion. A follow-up in the Huffington Post stated that outcry about the devices led the company to remove them the same day they were installed. That article, entitled “Why Bosses Should Snoop on Employees Less,”  goes on to explain:

. . . increasing surveillance to boost productivity is much different from increasing surveillance to prevent theft, and it's unclear if it does much beyond stressing employees out. Workplace stress can cost companies a few thousand dollars per worker every year through a combination in absenteeism and disability claims, multiple studies have found -- and that doesn't even cover any declines in productivity. And it's pretty clear employees find surveillance stressful.

Although SHARE has never come across warmth-detectors, UMass Memorial does use some technology to keep track of productivity. We are keeping an eye on this trend. Let us know if something new comes up in your area.

And while we’re on the subject, we encourage SHARE members to be cautious. Here in the US, an employer is entitled to monitor any communication activity on a company-owned system. And they can legally discipline you for anything you send that is illegal or out-of-line with their policies.

HAS OBAMA BEEN READING the SHARE HOSPITAL CONTRACT?

In the most recent SHARE Hospital contract negotiations, we implemented new language, designed to allow laid-off SHARE members to retain their pay rate if they cannot find another SHARE job that pays as well, if they must instead take a job in a lower pay grade. Although the language hasn’t worked as an automatic fix, it has helped SHARE members retain their standard of living. According to Politico, it appears that President Obama has been developing a similar idea, “In Tuesday's State of the Union address President Barack Obama offered a policy fix for workers who lose their jobs and end up in worse-paying ones: wage insurance. If an American worker takes a job that pays less than the one that vanished, ‘there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills,’ the president said.”

To those of you who have the holiday off this year, have a wonderful and meaningful day. To those of you who will be clocked-in, thank you for the work you will be doing on this day in service of the missions of our hospital and university. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend, and that things are off to a very good start for you this week. See you here next time . . .

Five-Tidbit Friday: December 18th, 2015

THERE’S an APP for THAT

When you’re shopping, do you want to buy products that are union made? Don’t use slave labor?  Fair trade? Cruelty free? Environmentally responsible? You can now use your phone to scan labels and make purchases that line up with your own personal ethics. Check out http://www.buycott.com/ for details.

HOLIDAY GIFTS and FESTIVE LIBATIONS, UNION-MADE

Please, shop responsibly

If you want to browse for ideas, Made-in-America by union employees, check out the AFL-CIO gift guide.

One must go to great lengths to make the Extra Mile . . .

Or, use the Labor 411 website for another thorough listing of union-made products. The list even includes union breweries and distilleries.

After all, if you're looking to mix up a fancy drink at New Year's (say, an Extra Mile?) shouldn't you use a reputable union-made rye, such as Knob Creek or Woodford Reserve?

RENTERS, WINTER IS COMING

Do you know your rights as a renter? This story on WGBH explains how the law is on your side, and gives advice for dealing with Winter issues. And everybody should remember to check their smoke and carbon detectors, of course.

CHILDCARE IS so EXPENSIVE, ONLY the WEALTHY CAN AFFORD IT

190 Mustaches?

. . . according to recent studies. And that’s not a good thing, writes Vivien Labaton in the New Republic. (But if you’re reading this, please know that the SHARE UMMS Childcare Fund aims to correct that, and will post application details for the next cycle in the new year.)

MORE MUSTACHES than WOMEN

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Mustaches Outnumber Women Among Medical-School Leaders.

Although SHARE more blog posts are coming, this column is taking a break until 2016, which, really, isn't all that far off. In the meanwhile, happy holidays! See you here next year . . .  

Five-Tidbit Friday: November 20, 2015

GRATITUDE IS GOOD for YOU

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving may only come once a year, but there's mounting scientific evidence about the benefits of developing thankful habits. Researcher Glenn Fox at the University of Southern California has been researching how gratitude alters the brain. “A lot of people conflate gratitude with the simple emotion of receiving a nice thing. What we found was something a little more interesting,” says Fox. “The pattern of [brain] activity we see shows that gratitude is a complex social emotion that is really built around how others seek to benefit us.” As you gear up for the big feast, here is some advice to help you and your family be truly thankful at Thanksgiving.

HAVE YOU ORDERED YOUR BUSTARD YET?

Although copyrighted by celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme in 1986, the Turducken (a kind of “Russian Doll Roast”) traces its roots back to at least medieval times, when animals might be stuffed within other animals for the sake of spectacle. (See also,  “illusion foods,” or “incredible foods.”)

Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany includes this example of a Russian Doll Roast involving way too many birds: “stuff a large OLIVE with CAPERS and a CLOVE,” and so on, it says. The directions continue stuffing birds, including a bec-figue, ortolan, lark, thrush, quail, plover, lapwing, partridge, woodcock, teal, fowl, duck, chicken, pheasant, goose, and turkey, until ultimately we’re told to “place the TURKEY inside an enormous BUSTARD.”

An EATER’S HISTORY of THANKSGIVING: AMERICA’S MOST IMPORTANT HOLIDAY

According to Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Food, at Sea and Ashore, in the Nineteenth Century, Thanksgiving used to be a bigger deal. For roughly the first half of our nation’s history, Thanksgiving reigned as the premier holiday among the Europeans who came to America, and their descendents. (Celebrating Christmas was too “churchy” for the Puritans.) For a fascinating tour of Thanksgiving meals through the ages, including the "Turducken," be sure to check out foodtimeline.org.

JINGLE BELLS, the THANKSGIVING DAY CLASSIC

Did you know that Jingle Bells was originally written as a song to celebrate Thanksgiving Day? James Lord Pierpont wrote it, quite possibly right here in Massachusetts, some time in the 1850’s, almost certainly at a time when one might expect the heavy snows to begin as early as November.

Placard Commemorating the composition of  "Jingle Bells" in Medford, Massachusetts

HELP CREATE a HUNGER-FREE COMMUNITY

Probably all of us have driven along Route 9 in Shrewsbury, past the Worcester County Food Bank. On their website, you can quickly identify the nearest food pantry, learn where to donate funds and food for the hungry, volunteer to help with the distribution process, and learn how to advocate for the hungry in your community.

See you here in two weeks. Hope you have a decent weekend, and a very wonderful Thanksgiving!

Five-Tidbit Friday: November 13th, 2015

RAISING MEN’S HEALTH AWARENESS

Röntgen and his beard

It’s Movember! Both the “No Shave November” and “Movember” movements encourage men to abstain from the razor for thirty days in order to raise men’s health and cancer awareness. Unfortunately, it’s getting harder to tell which hair is charitable, and which is just garden-variety facial fluff.  

ROENTGENIUM

On November 8th, 1895, German physicist William Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays. National Radiologic Technology Week is celebrated each year during the week of the anniversary of this discovery. Röntgen’s own unruly chin-growth predated the UK’s Decembeard event.

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE in MASSACHUSETTS

According to the Boston Globe, the Massachusetts State Legislature’s Labor and Workforce Development Committee has put forward a bill to increase the minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour. The introduction of the bill coincided with Fight for $15 demonstrations in over 270 cities, involving thousands of workers across the country. The bill still requires approval by the House, Senate, and Governor Charlie Baker.

HONORING VETERANS

Veterans’ Day was observed this week in Worcester and around the country. President Obama’s Veteran’s Day speech focused on jobs, as Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post writes:

“We’re in the midst of a new wave of American veterans,” said Obama, referring to a generation of men and women who have weathered the longest stretch of war in U.S. history. Those veterans have struggled in recent years to get care from an overwhelmed Department of Veterans Affairs. They’ve faced a higher unemployment rate than their civilian peers and an increase in suicides.

Here in Central Massachusetts, many work continually to honor the service of our Veterans, and to help them find ways to serve their country at home. The Worcester Veterans’ Services Division aims to supply local veterans with immediate financial aid, medical assistance, and referral services on issues such as housing, employment opportunities, health, and education. Notably, four of our area colleges and universities--Worcester State University, Fitchburg, Nichols College, and Mount Wachusett Community College--have been designated “military friendly” institutions.  

REMEMBERING VETERANS with PAUL JULIAN

Describing one particularly personal commemoration of our country’s veterans, former SHARE-UMMS president and UMMS Library Assistant Paul Julian writes: “On July 9, while on a walk, I stopped to read a Veteran's monument on Upsala Street in Worcester. I had read others on my walks, but this was special, because Richard Leo Jandron , for whom the memorial was erected, died from his wounds sustained in Cherbourg, France exactly 71 years before. I said a prayer for Gunner Mate Jandron, and it occurred to me that I should do this for every veteran who is so honored here in Worcester. Working with two lists, I learned that there were 237 such monuments here in Worcester. I decided to seek them out so that I could pray and reflect on the sacrifices these brave veterans made. I aimed to walk to all 237 monuments. Today, the day before Veterans Day, I journeyed to the last one on my list for Lt. Paul Adams, which is located on Sunderland Road here in Worcester. I have found this to be both a moving and illuminating experience. We owe so much to our veterans. May their sacrifices always be appreciated by us.”

See you here next Friday. Hope you have a very decent weekend . . .

Five-Tidbit Friday: November 6, 2015

FOLLOWING SHARE ONLINE

We’ve gotten some helpful feedback about the SHARE blog recently. We apologize that the “Sign-Up by Email” feature is not available on all web browsers. If you’d like to receive updates in your inbox, and don’t see the sign-up box in the upper-right corner of your screen, please send an email to kirk.davis@theshareunion.org  

FREE CLASSES, IT’S TRUE

More details have been requested about the recent tidbit touting free online classes through edX.org.

• The project was founded by Harvard University and MIT, and a number of colleges and universities have since joined in.
• New courses are continually being offered.
• The program does not adhere to a traditional academic calendar.
• At any given moment, a few million students are enrolled in the courses, and the website promotes a variety of ways of interacting with other students in your class, wherever in the world they may be.
• EdX offers certificates of successful completion, but does not offer course credit. Whether or not a college or university offers credit for an edX course is within the sole discretion of that school.

Signing up for a class is just about as simple as registering for the edX site and clicking on the course(s) you want to take. The EdX site has a useful video explaining how it works. (A couple of years back, I signed up for Harvard’s “Food and Science” course. Signing up was fairly simple and straightforward. Keeping up with the course-load after work, however, was trickier. But when else can you use your kitchen as a laboratory?)

REAL FAMILIES vs. WISTFUL SYSTEMS

This week, the Pew Research Center released a report about work-family balance in households that include a mother and a father. This prompted the Huffington Post to wonder why so many government policies and employers are stuck in “Leave It to Beaver” mode--notably highlighting that the US is the only developed country that does not offer paid family leave to new mothers. (Additionally, the article points out that “Almost 40 percent of kids in the U.S. live in a home with a single parent or no parent at all (for example, a grandparent's in charge), according to a different Pew study.”)

PAID SICK LEAVE at the POLLS

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that new government regulations on paid sick leave went over well on ballots around the country.

WE’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES

. . . keeping an eye on the labor-management partnership at Kaiser Permanente. In his address at the recent White House Summit on Worker Voice, President Obama stated, “Kaiser Permanente works with 28 different unions to provide good pay and benefits, but also educational programs, and avenues for employees to help improve quality and care throughout the company — which is why they’re considered one of the premier health organizations in the country.”

See you here next Friday! Hope you have a great weekend . . .

Five-Tidbit Frightday: October 30, 2015

Happy Halloween! This week's random roundup has a bit of a theme . . .

WHAT IS a HEALTHY DIET?

Halloween candy is bad for you. Vegetables, on the other hand, are good for you. Beyond these generally accepted facts, there’s a lot of conflicting dietary information out there. This week, the World Health Organization released a report saying definitively that processed meats cause cancer, and that, probably, red meat does, too. Related reports argue that you don’t need to give up those meats altogether. Fortunately, when you’re trying to figure out how to make sense of the varying and contradictory information, the Harvard School of Public Health offers this guide to deciphering media stories about diet.

NOT HEALTHY, BUT SAFE?

You know those stories about random, unsuspecting trick-or-treaters being poisoned (or worse) by tainted Halloween goodies? They’re all urban legends, every single one. Or so contends Dr. Joel Best, the world's leading expert on Halloween hostility, in this podcast.  

MAKING HALLOWEEN SAFER

Need ideas for getting creative to make your kids visible to car traffic? Also, if you plan to offer candies that are free of allergens and cross-contamination, don’t forget to review this year’s list of allergen-friendly candies, especially if you’re participating in the Teal-Pumpkin Project.

WHAT'S this CANDY WORTH?

This irreverent video guide to trading Halloween candy sums up the Halloween barter system pretty nicely.

HALLOWEEN AFTER-PARTY

And, finally, after you’ve applied the “Mom and Dad Tax” to the kids’ candy stash, and they’re tucked away in bed, you can consult this infographic for pairing candy and wine. (There are still a few studies that hold to the idea that the resveratrol in wine might be good for you, after all.)

See you here next Friday! Hope you have a great weekend.

Five-Tidbit Friday: October 9, 2015

FREE CLASSES

Did you know you could take free online courses, many of them for credit, from other leading universities such as MIT, Harvard, BU, Columbia, Berkeley, and Berklee at edx.org?

WATCH THIS

In this video, Margaret Heffernan makes a compelling case for getting rid of the pecking order, ditching “the superchicken model,” and helping one another at work.

OPEN ENROLLMENT

Don't forget! The Fall Open Enrollment period has opened and runs through November 6th. (Please note that the SHARE Child Care Fund and Adoption Subsidy differs from the one mentioned in the Open Enrollment literature. The deadline for SHARE applications is November 2nd.)

WORKPLACE DEMOCRACY

Earlier this week, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced The Workplace Democracy Act, an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act designed to undo “Right-to-Work” laws and other barriers to unions. Meanwhile, the White House hosted the Summit on Worker Voice.

INSPIRATIONAL WISDOM

See you here next Friday! Hope you have a great weekend.

Five-Tidbit Friday: October 2, 2015

This is the third installment of Five Tidbit Friday, and this week we’ve got news items ranging from near to far and back again.

• CANCER WALK Congratulations to participants of this year’s cancer walk! The roughly thirteen thousand participants this year have raised nearly $400,000 for cancer research and care.

• RETIREE BENEFITS in the NEWS You may remember the now-defeated House Bill H59, which was designed to cut pension benefits from State Employees. That bill did not pass. However, we’ve been watching a similar situation in Rhode Island for employees of the state there, to better understand potential threats to public employee retirement plans. This week, the New York Times describes how that dispute played out, and the settlement between unions and the State.
• FREE SPEECH at WORK In national news, an NLRB complaint against Quicken Loans could redefine the rules of free speech in the workplace, reports the Detroit Free Press. The case is likely to have implications for social media. The ruling is expected to uphold current standards, including that "employees have a ... right to discuss wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment with fellow employees, as well as with non-employees, such as union representatives." Meanwhile, the US Department of Labor has continued its emphasis on employee rights with a Worker Voice Summit, which will underscore the value of worker organizing and collective bargaining, as a new #starttheconvo initiative invites frontline voices from around the country into that conversation.
• INNOVATIONS in HEALTHCARE The Legal Services Corporation recently announced that Community Legal Aid in Worcester, Massachusetts will receive a 24-month $209,524 Pro Bono Innovation Fund grant to develop a partnership with UMass Memorial Medical Center. The model will address legal needs that can negatively impact the health of low-income and minority communities and interfere with healthcare providers’ ability to improve the health of these patients.
• MOOSE! We hear that a moose has been recently seen on our local Worcester streets. Drive safe!

See you here next Friday. Hope you have a great weekend.

Five-Tidbit Friday: September 25, 2015

Welcome to Fall! For SHARE-UMMS, Summer closed out in a lovely way. Altogether, over a thousand members of our community participated in last week’s Chocolate Day, including SHARE members, other hospital and university employees, medical students, senior administrators, and even a few children. But now, it is time for another Tidbit roundup. Here are five notable and timely items:

• This week, UMMHC and UMMS have been screening The Connection, a film about the science of mindfulness. UMass Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness has long been at the forefront of this research. The CFM provides an eight week stress-reduction program, which several SHARE members have attended. SHARE-UMMS Treasurer Kathy Bateman says she loved the program, and would attend again. “I learned ways to relieve stress right at my desk. I’d recommend it to anyone,” she says.
• Employers are starting to catch up with the value of the research being done at UMMS. Internet-search giant Google (considered by some to be the best employer in the country) has even developed its own in-house emotional intelligence training program called “Search Inside Yourself” (Get it? It’s Google, after all.)
• Any list of Tidbits would be insufficient to tackle an issue as serious as mental health. That said, please know that there are many free and low-cost mental health tools available. We recently came across this useful (if somewhat glib) resource list. The list begins with a series of apps, most of which are designed to help build grit and brain muscles, and moves through to a valuable collection of hotlines and support groups. For more local services, please see this list of mental health providers in Worcester.
• Mindfulness and self-care are only part of the equation toward improving what we do, of course. Right now, the work confronting almost every SHARE member is unnecessarily complicated, difficult, and frustrating. We want to eliminate needless headaches. We know that frontline employees need to be the ones to design work-systems. Too often our work requires heroic effort to do a good job, and there are too many pitfalls along the way. Our union is working to enable SHARE members to develop structures that minimize the likelihood of error, and make it easier at the end of the day to see more good outcomes coming from our hard work.
• On a lighter note, you might, given its popularity, have already seen this related talk by researcher Shawn Achor. But in case you’ve missed it, here’s a link to “The Happy Secret to Better Work.” It’s funny and smart, and only a little over twelve minutes long.

The weather report looks beautiful for the next few days. Good time to get outside and move around.  It’s not too late to register for The UMass Medicine Cancer Walk, which has been an effective fundraiser for cancer research at UMass, and a meaningful event for cancer patients, their friends, and their families, including many SHARE members. See you here next Friday. Hope you have a great weekend.  

New to the SHARE Blog: Five Tidbit Friday

Welcome to the first installment in a new SHARE blogging experiment: Five Tidbit Friday, five observations about SHARE members and our community, and about the broader world of higher education, healthcare, personal health, labor, workplace issues, etc.

The recent Labor Day holiday yielded a bumper crop of media pieces about work and unions, (including an opinion piece by US Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, published in the Boston Globe on the occasion of his visit with President Obama to the 2015 Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast.) Accordingly, the inaugural Five Tidbit Friday rounds up some recent worthwhile reads (and a video) about wage inequality, the minimum wage, the decline of the middle class, and what we can do about these things.

• In this video, economist and former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich explains why Americans need stronger unions.

• In “America Doesn’t Need a Raise, We Need a New National Norm for Wage Growth”  MIT Professor of Work and Employment Research and Engineering Systems, Thomas Kochan, makes a call to “reverse three decades of wage stagnation and rising income inequality,” pointing out that “analysts have begun to recognize that the long-term decline in unions and worker bargaining power accounts for a sizable portion of the problem.” He encourages readers to “rally around a simple norm that all workers should share fairly in the economic growth they help produce.”

• This recent Op-Ed piece published in the LA Daily News, “Americans Should Think Bigger than $15 an Hour for this Labor Day” was written by Cherri Senders. (Senders serves as founder and publisher of www.labor411.org, a consumer guide to goods and services whose employers treat their workers fairly with good wages, benefits and working conditions.) Although there are lots of good reasons to increase the national minimum wage, Senders argues that “a $15 minimum wage is hardly a panacea for a country whose middle class has been declining for more than 30 years.”

• Here, Ralph Nader gives his explanation of “Why Labor Day Matters,” claiming that “commercialists have transformed Labor Day into a reason for shopping. The fact that Labor Day was conceived as an occasion dedicated to America's workers and what they have endured is sadly under-acknowledged and unappreciated.”

• And, finally, this longread. “Can Millennials Save Unions,” which appeared in a recent issue of The Atlantic, speculates about the future of labor by looking closely at events in the news right now. It’s worth the time. But, if you want a quick summary, we’ll just mention that this article . . .
• Traces recent union organizing at Gawker and Salon, in the NCAA, and at NYU.
• Describes how millennials’ values overlap those of unions. (Speaking about a large-scale survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the article claims that "Without discussing unions at all, the firm . . . found that younger workers share concerns for some of the very things that unions have sought for generations.")
• Explains that lack of work experience, and particularly experience with unions, leaves millennials with questions about unionization, and skepticism about established union hierarchies.
• Points out that, "In general, if you ask the majority of workers, ‘If you could have a union, would you like that?’ they say yes, but the opportunity to do that is rather limited” because of broken labor laws and widespread employer opposition.
• And, too, goes on to predict challenges to the future of organized labor.

If you'd like to give a shout out to a fellow SHARE member in a future blog post, let us know! We'd love to recognize them here. Send an email to kirk.davis@theshareunion.org, or call 508-929-4020, and let's share the kudos. See you here next Friday. Hope you have a great weekend.