Michael M. Kubayanda Resumes Role as PRC Chairman

U.S. e-commerce continues to drive growth in the retail sector, as nonstore sales jumped 11.5% in July, the U.S. Commerce Department reported today. Total retail sales increased 4.3% year over year. In the first month of the third quarter, nonstore sales adjusted for seasonal variations totaled $52.74 billion, compared with $47.31 in July 2016. The 11.5% jump in July is a significant acceleration from June, during which nonstore sales increased 9.3% over the same month last year. Nonstore sales mainly take place online, but also include other sales that take place outside of stores, including mail and telephone orders, door-to-door sales and sales through vending machines. Click Read More below for more of the story.

The era of white-collar organized labor is fully upon us: the editorial staff of The New Yorker wants to unionize. This morning, organizers sent a letter to the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, asking that the institution and its corporate owner, Condé Nast, voluntarily recognize their membership in the NewsGuild of New York. (Publications ranging from the New York Times to Jacobin have bargaining units with the NewsGuild.) Organizers say that of the 115 or so union-eligible employees, nearly 90 percent have signed union cards. The group includes copy editors, web producers, fact-checkers, photo and design staff, the social-media and publicity teams, editorial assistants, and assistant editors. Management and senior-level employees are excluded, as are staff writers, whose job title would not escape the red pen of the magazine’s fact department: Writers at The New Yorker are nearly all independent contractors, rather than staff, and thus do not receive health care or other benefits, despite being largely prevented from writing for other outlets. The relatively few editorial staffers who’ve expressed concerns with the unionizing effort say they are worried about retaliation in an industry where reputation is the coin of the realm. Click Read More below for additional information.

FY2022 fourth quarter service performance scores covering July 22 through July 29 included: *First-Class Mail: 93.2 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal third quarter. *Marketing Mail: 94 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 0.6 percentage points from the fiscal third quarter. *Periodicals: 86.3 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal third quarter.