Cathay Pacific's Flight Attendants Union is lobbying the management of the Hong Kong-based carrier for improved wages, after the airline rejected the union's request for a 5% pay increase with a 2% offer on November 30.

The FAU this week approved a motion to go on strike in the new year — not by refusing to board the planes, but by performing the bare minimum required service. That means yes to water and flight safety instructions, and no to nuts, alcohol and smiles, with friendly service being the heart of the Cathay customer experience.

Not helping matters: the CX flight attendant who recently threatened to throw coffee in the face of daughter of the former Prime Minister of Thailand, and was duly fired. (Coffee, tea or third-degree burns?)

Merck chairman and CEO Kenneth C. Frazier was honored in June with the “Good Scout” Award by Philadelphia’s Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council. Frazier grew up in North Philadelphia and credits scouting as instrumental in his life. Now Frazier, the first African American to head a major pharmaceutical company, is turning his back on the organization until it reverses its discriminatory policies.

Now Frazier and Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, have joined the growing wave of corporate leaders taking a stand against discrimination towards gay scouts and leaders in the Boy Scouts of America. 

As GLAAD notes of the corporate backlash to the Boy Scouts' anti-LGBT stance, Merck joins Intel and UPS with the following statement: “The BSA's policy of exclusion based on sexual orientation directly conflicts with the Merck Foundation’s giving guidelines.  The Foundation re-evaluated funding for the BSA when the organization restated its policy that excludes members on the basis of sexual orientation.  Merck Foundation has notified the BSA of this decision.” 

Boy Scouts of America director of public relations, Deron Smith, provided the following statement to brandchannel: “Scouting believes that good people can personally disagree on this topic and still work together to accomplish the common good. While not national sponsors, these companies have positively impacted America’s youth through support of Scouting in local communities. We respect their right to express their own opinions.”Continue reading...

It turns out that Fresh & Easy was neither, in the end.

Tesco, the third largest retailer in the world, has announced that is ready to pull up stakes and close its 200 Fresh & Easy supermarkets in California and Nevada after a largely unsuccessful five-year run.

As Tesco CEO Phil Clarke put it about why the US grocery store brand is "under strategic review," "It just became clear to us that the journey to sustainable returns was going to take too long. ... It's likely but not certain that our presence in America will come to an end."

Tim Mason, deputy chief executive in charge of the U.S. business, has left the company, effective immediately, after 30 years of service. But as we reported back in July, the writing has been on the wall for Tesco's US expansion.Continue reading...

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index is the national benchmarking tool on business policies and practices related to LGBT employees, and their 2013 report has good news.

“Businesses have laid a foundation of workplace equality the likes of which no previous generation of employees and job seekers has ever seen,” said the Human Rights Campaign in releasing its Index this week.

The HRC's CEI report has been released each fall since 2002 as a granular analysis of large U.S. employer’s performance pertinent to the LGBT workplace. When the group did its first survey a decade ago, just 13 businesses received top rating, while in 2013, a record 252 businesses achieved the top rating out of 688 businesses rated including the entire Fortune 500.

Companies are rated on 40 policies and practices, including having fully-inclusive equal employment opportunity policies, providing equal employment benefits, demonstrating organizational LGBT competency, evidence of their commitment to equality publicly, and exercising responsible citizenship.Continue reading...

Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act no longer faces any obstacles to becoming the law of the land, now that last week's elections solidified Democrats' hold on the U.S. Senate. But private companies will continue to react to the realities of health-care costs in the interests of their own businesses, to the extent they can and for as long as they can.

Take Walmart: Just after the elections, the nation's largest retailer has announced hikes in the cost of workers' health-care coverage of 8 percent to 36 percent because of the rising prices of medical services and health insurance. And some of Walmart's 1.4 million U.S. employees already have reacted by considering dropping their own coverage, according to CNBC.

The cost of Walmart's most popular health-insurance plan, for example, will go up by $2 per paycheck, or 13 percent. Still, overall, Walmart said that average costs its employees will bear for the coverage should only rise by about 4 percent in 2013 because the company has eliminated some high-premium plans and trimmed some services.Continue reading...

LinkedIn’s 100 million members reportedly follow at least one of 2 million companies with Company Pages, but use of that content has been less than optimal.

Staring this week, redesigned Company Pages offer marketers a visually-enhanced platform presence and early adopters include Philips, Citi, Dell and HP. The redesign includes improved brand imagery, streamlined navigation and a prominent follower button.

LinkedIn Global Product Marketing Director Marc Bishop told brandchannel, “Our newly redesigned Company Pages offer a suite of tools for marketers to attract LinkedIn’s affluent and influential professional audience. As companies build out their presence, it’s important for them to tailor their content and marketing messages to the needs – and professional mindset – of their specific target audiences. Marketers can then leverage the new navigational elements of Company Pages that enable our members to easily discover and engage with this content.”Continue reading...

The Advertising Club of New York is committing $700,000 to “I’mpart,” an initiative to support training programs in high school, college and post-college to promote greater diversity in advertising and marketing, industries notorious for poor inclusion of blacks, Latinos and Asians. “Diversity in advertising has crept into the news again. The gorilla in the room continues to make noise as everyone tries to ignore it.” 

The 2010 census revealed that the U.S. now has more than 50 million Latinos, nearly 40 million African-Americans and almost 15 million Asians, and the paucity of representation and retention of these ethnicities in the C-level suites is alarming.Continue reading...

The numbers were probably stacked against them from the start, but Friday's protest of Chick-fil-A by GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) didn't turn out nearly as many participants in the planned LGBT "Kiss-in" as the chain was able to generate at former Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee's nationwide "Appreciation Day" for the restaurant chain on Wednesday.

Or gauging by another measure, by mid-afternoon Friday, nearly 14,000 Facebook users had subscribed to GLAAD's "National Same Sex Kiss Day at Chick-fil-A" event, while some 630,000 subscribed to Wednesday's "appreciation day," according to a report by Politico.com.

And while Politico reported that the "kiss-ins appear to have occurred without incident" in Chick-fil-A restaurants, there was one ugly scene: The exterior of a Chick-fil-A in Torrance, Calif., was defaced with graffiti reading, "Tastes Like Hate."Continue reading...