Today’s News & Commentary — May 31, 2017
Uber fired Anthony Levandowski, the autonomous car researcher at the center of the company’s legal battle with Waymo, the self-driving car subsidiary of Google. Waymo alleged, in a civil suit, that while he was still at Waymo, Levandowski downloaded thousands of documents and used them to found a start up later purchased by Uber. Uber said it fired Levandowski for cause, suggesting that he did not cooperate with the company’s requests to cooperate and impeded its internal investigation.
Sharon Block, writing in Democracy Journal, argues that Trump’s budget proposal reveals his true feelings towards labor. Despite receiving a higher share of the union vote than any Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984, Trump is no ally. His budget calls for a 20% increase in funding for the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, responsible for enforcing financial and voting disclosure requirements for unions, while cutting the NLRB’s budget by 6%.
Female CEOs of S&P 500 companies earn a higher median wage than their male counterparts, according to the Wall Street Journal. Female CEOs made up roughly 5% of the sample, 28 in total, but accounted for 3 of the 10 highest paid executives. S&P 500 businesses run by women generated a median shareholder return of 18.4% in 2016, about 3% higher than male-run companies.
