Caught in the Cold: Wyoming’s strong economy pushes rise in homelessness, By Benjamin Storrow, March 31, 2013, Casper Star-Tribune: “Robert Larsen spent three years crisscrossing the country looking for work. He cleaned oil from Florida beaches after the BP oil spill. He found work in the booming oil fields of North Dakota until a disagreement with his boss cost him his job. He chased leads in Colorado , New Jersey, Nevada and Utah. When he read there were jobs in Wyoming, he strapped his helmet to his backpack, cobbled together the little money he had left, and he and his fiancée hitched a ride to the Cowboy State. In early March, Larsen sat at a picnic table in a South Cheyenne park on a cold but sunny day. Lured by the promise of work, he had not been in Wyoming a week but was already acquainted with the wind. Since arriving in Wyoming, he has lived at the COMEA House, a Cheyenne homeless shelter…”
Caught in the Cold: Wyoming struggles to develop plan to address homelessness, By Benjamin Storrow, April 1, 2013, Casper Star-Tribune: “Cathie Hughes is a woman with seemingly limitless energy. But she sounded dejected when she answered the phone in early March. Hughes, CEO of Southwestern Wyoming Recovery Access Programs, learned the previous night that funding for her organization’s emergency homeless shelter would be cut because of a technicality, threatening the closure of the only shelter in Lincoln, Sweetwater, Sublette and Uinta counties. The SW WRAP shelter was small, sleeping six people in its men’s facility and four in its women’s/families’ facility. Nonetheless, its closure would mark the disappearance of the only safety net for the homeless in southwestern Wyoming…”
Deal reached to force paid sick leave in New York City, By Michael Barbaro and Michael M. Grynbaum, March 28, 2013, New York Times: “New York City is poised to mandate that thousands of companies provide paid time off for sick employees, bolstering a national movement that has been resisted by wary business leaders. A legislative compromise reached on Thursday night represents a raw display of political muscle by a coalition of labor unions and liberal activists who overcame fierce objections from New York’s business-minded mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, and his allies in the corporate world. The deal required a high-profile concession from a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Bloomberg, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who had single-handedly blocked action on the sick-leave issue for three years, arguing that it would inflict damage on the city’s fragile economy…”
Sick-pay plan called blessing and burden, By Patrick McGeehan, March 29, 2013, New York Times: “The compromise reached on a sick-leave law for workers in New York City drew cheers on Friday from employees who have feared that catching a cold could cost them their jobs. But some employers complained that it would unfairly load yet another expense onto their shoulders. The agreement would eventually require most businesses with at least 20 employees to provide up to five days a year off with pay for illness. It also calls for even the smallest businesses, like the bodegas found on nearly every block, to let workers take days off without pay but without jeopardizing their jobs when they are too sick to work…”
