In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices ruled that companies can use arbitration clauses to block employees from banding together in class action suits. Sanford Jaffe, co-director of the Center for Negotiation and Conflict Resolution and an an assistant to the United States attorney general, 1965-67, writes how future historians will view the Supreme Court’s decision allowing companies to use arbitration clauses in contracts to prohibit workers from filing class-action suits as a major step backward, accelerating the move away from a public to a private system of justice and further limiting access to the public courts.

New York Times, May 28, 2018

The Fed and United Way findings suggest the U.S. economy isn’t nearly as strong as statistics such as the unemployment rate and the GDP growth rate suggest. Taken alone, these metrics mask the fact that some Americans are doing well and some are not.

“We have a ‘Two Realities’ economy in America,” said William Rodgers, a professor at Rutgers University and chief economist at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. “One segment has truly recovered from the Great Recession and is at full employment. The other continues to experience stagnating wages, involuntary part-time employment, inflexible work schedules and weaker access to health care.”

Washington Post, May 25, 2018

“There have been a lot of good ideas for this area. People want to be innovative,” Kobble said, adding that for him personally business has been good, particularly in the summer when visitors cross the Northampton Street Bridge from Easton to enjoy a beer at the Sand Bar while they look out at the water.

Knowles said Phillipsburg officials started working on the latest plan two years ago when Mayor Stephen Ellis took office. They worked with the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University to do a charrette — the process of creating a design plan — for the town’s riverfront last year.

The Morning Call, May 21, 2018

n addition to savings and profits for National Grid, the pipeline enhancement would generate 3,186 jobs during the one-year construction period in Central Jersey, as well as Pennsylvania and New York, resulting in an $327.2 million increase in economic activity in the project area. This is according to an economic impact analysis conducted by Rutgers University’s Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Williams’ request.

Employment would be generated across construction, engineering, management, manufacturing and wholesale sectors, which, in turn, would generate indirect employment in other industries.

MyCentralJersey.com, May 18, 2018

Job prospects for the Class of 2018 have improved because a low unemployment rate means fewer people are applying for available openings, said Carl Van Horn, the director of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

“Even though there are jobs aplenty compared to previous years, that doesn’t mean the salaries of those jobs have gone up enormously — although we are seeing signs of positive wage gains in some sectors,” he said. “And we’re even finding, for the first time in several years, some employers are beginning to pay hiring bonuses.”

WHYY Radio, May 15, 2018

Managing a McDonald’s, Burger King, Panera Bread, or Starbucks franchise, among others, is not for the faint-hearted, especially when customers overstay their welcome and others want the spaces they are in. In cities, particularly, the fact that there are fewer and fewer places for people to gather exacerbates the problem.

We need better ways than we have been witnessing in recent days to deal with customers who view these private businesses as, essentially, public domains.

Opinion at NJ.com (Linda Stamato), May 13, 2018