For New Lands' End CEO, Green Is The Best Color

Federica Marchionni felt like a natural fit at Lands’ End. Literally.

The 43-year-old chief executive, who took office in February, said was charmed by the apparel company’s outdoorsy brand. Paying homage to the late Lands’ End founder, Gary Comer, an environmentalist and sailor, Marchionni kicked off her reign by doubling down on the company’s efforts to be green.

“He was a sailor, and I love sailing,” she told The Huffington Post in an interview. “It’s the contact with nature that’s important.”

Lands’ End already has an eco-friendly reputation. Marchionni said it recycles 90 percent of the waste it generates at its plant in Wisconsin, where the company is based. Though the carbon footprint from shipping 16 million boxes around the world is notable, she pointed out that 60 percent of the packaging material is recycled. Over the last three years, Lands’ End has also helped plant more than 500,000 trees in U.S. forests.

But Marchionni wants to up the ante. As she mulls expanding around the world, she's also launched a new environmental campaign that would see the company planting more trees, using more sustainable materials in its products and further reducing its carbon footprint.

This spring, Lands' End plans to help plant half a million additional trees in partnership with the National Forest Foundation.

The company is also on track to receive a form certification from the Swiss company Bluesign, which ensures that textiles are made with eco-friendly dyes and materials that are safe for workers to handle. It's unclear how quickly these changes will be implemented.

“Everything that’s going into production is more sustainable,” Marchionni said. “[Bluesign] reduces the harmful chemicals and dyes. They improve safety for the workers at the plant and in local communities.”

Still, Marchionni said she can make the strongest sustainability push for Lands’ End by using the c-suite as a pulpit to reach customers.

In April, she began sending emails to customers to determine who would prefer to receive a digital version of the Lands' End annual catalog. Gradually switching to digital would allow the company to reduce the energy and materials needed to print and ship a physical booklet.

Now, like a couple embarking on honeymoon travel after renewing vows, Marchionni wants to take Lands’ End -- and its recommitment to sustainability -- global. A former executive at Dolce & Gabbana, she envisions a lifestyle brand for outdoorsy people around the planet. Lands’ End currently focuses on the U.S. and has small markets in the U.K., Germany and Japan, but Marchionni wants to be in every major market.

This may be a critical time for the company. Since Marchionni took over in February, the stock price has been on a downward slope.

The company's sales from November 2014 through the end of January 2015 hit $504.6 million, down 4.9 percent from the previous year. Still, its revenues have been rising steadily since it spun off from Sears Holdings Corp. last April.

“I do believe we needed to say what we really are great at,” she said of the new environmental campaign, which kicked off on Earth Day, April 22. “Now we’re going to take on the rest of the world.”

At the very least, Marchionni, who hails from a small village outside Rome, wants to help create a better world for her 7-year-old son, Gabriel.

"He loves the environment, we care about it together," she said. "And I love him. He's my life."

Barclays Considers Raising Wages For Lowest-Paid Workers Around The World

Barclays is considering guaranteeing a living wage to workers worldwide, as it already does for its employees and contract workers in the U.K., where the bank is headquartered.

At a shareholder meeting in London last week, Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins said he would work with the international labor union UNI Global to consider raising pay for the bank’s lowest-level workers around the world. Barclays has about 132,000 employees operating in 50 countries, but declined to say how many workers would get a raise if such a proposal were enacted.

“We are very proud of our certification as a living wage employer in the U.K.,” Jenkins said at the meeting. “We are willing to get started and to discuss this global initiative with UNI Global Union.”

Barclays started moving toward paying a living wage to workers and contractors in the U.K. as early as 2003, and officially received accreditation from the Living Wage Foundation, a U.K. group that has been pushing companies on the issue, in 2013.

The living wage measure would most directly affect bank tellers, mailroom workers and contract workers who provide the bank with cleaning and security services. In the U.K., the bank pays the thousands of workers it employs in these capacities 9.15 pounds ($14.10) an hour in London and 7.85 pounds ($12.09) an hour in the rest of the country.

The bank has not said yet how it will determine what exactly constitutes a "living wage" in different countries. In the U.K., these amounts are determined annually by a London government agency, which looks at the basic cost of living. Companies are only required to pay the U.K.’s minimum wage of 6.50 pounds an hour, and paying the living wage is voluntary.

“Paying people that work for us a wage that supports a decent standard of living makes good business sense and is in line with our values,” Barclays said in an email statement to The Huffington Post. “Currently, this is a UK-specific commitment but Barclays is aware of international efforts to combat wage inequality in other countries, and we are gathering information on how this can be implemented.”

Barclays' effort to expand its living wage commitment is just the latest sign of an emerging movement to raise pay for low-income workers globally.

“We’re in crisis in the globe with wages being too low,” said Christy Hoffman, the deputy general secretary at UNI Global, which is based in Switzerland. Hoffman cautioned that its discussions with Barclays on the issue are still in their very early days.

Hoffman compared her group’s efforts on a global living wage to the movement in the U.S. for a wage of $15 per hour for fast food employees and other workers. There are currently 10,000 Barclays employees in the U.S., Hoffman said, but it isn’t clear how many would be affected by a possible commitment to a living wage.

UNI Global is not active in the U.S. movement for $15 an hour, but it represents more than 20 million workers worldwide in Africa, Central and South America, Asia and Europe.

Jenkins' comments stand in sharp contrast to last year’s shareholder meeting, when Barclays executives came under fire for what shareholders called excessive pay packages for executives, particularly in light of the bank’s involvement in rate-fixing and other scandals over the past few years.

The higher wages in the U.K. have meant that fewer contractors leave the bank, according to a report sponsored by the company and released in January. Contractors also reported higher levels of “engagement” with their job -- i.e., they’re happier, the report stated.

“Having supported the Living Wage for over 10 years, we know that it can improve productivity, morale and retention rates,” Dominic Johnson, the employee relations director for Barclays, said in the January report. "This is not just an expression of our corporate values or an issue of social impact, but good business sense.”

Other employers that have committed to paying a living wage in the U.K. include KPMG, Burberry, HSBC and Nestle.

In the U.S., the average bank teller makes $12.81 an hour, according to the Labor Department. Pay for bank tellers in the U.S. is so low that nearly one-third of them receive some kind of public assistance, according to a 2014 UNI Global report.

UNI Global's Hoffman said that she hopes Barclays inspires other global financial institutions. "We hope this is a first step with banks," she said.

Big Businesses In Baltimore Told Employees To Stay Home After Riots

Some of Baltimore’s biggest employers closed their offices on Tuesday, following the violence that erupted after the funeral of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died after suffering a spinal injury in police custody.

Johns Hopkins University, which employs more than 21,000 workers in the city, canceled all classes and events on Tuesday and asked all nonessential employees to stay home.

“This is out of an abundance of caution and uncertainty about what conditions will be like today,” Dennis O’Shea, a spokesman for the college, told The Huffington Post.

He said the school had not yet planned any outreach programs for after the unrest subsided, but that some student groups were in the city helping to clean up debris from the riots Monday.

Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health Systems, another top employer, remained open on Tuesday.

"The safety and security of our patients and employees is our priority," Kim Hoppe, a hospital spokeswoman, said in a statement. "We are advising patients to check with their health care provider to verify appointments."

Loyola University Maryland canceled all classes after 2 p.m. on Tuesday. It remains unclear whether the school will open on Wednesday.

"That's not something we know as of yet," Nick Alexopoulos, spokesman for the university, told HuffPost.

Constellation Energy, with its roughly 3,100-strong workforce in Baltimore, asked employees to work from home.

“In an effort to ensure employee safety, Constellation asked its Baltimore-based employees to work remotely,” Christina Pratt, a spokesman, told HuffPost in an email. “We will continue to monitor the situation in the days ahead and stay in regular contact with our employees.”

The city’s two largest financial companies, money manager T. Rowe Price Group and the investment bank Legg Mason, also asked employees to work from home. T. Rowe Price sent employees home early on Monday as violence broke out across the city.

“As always, the safety and security of our associates remains our paramount concern,” said spokesman Edward Giltenan, adding that T. Rowe Price employs 1,262 people at its evacuated downtown Baltimore headquarters. “We have maintained communications with our associates during this time and will continue to do so as circumstances warrant. We will also continue to monitor the situation in consultation with local authorities to determine what additional steps, if any, may need to be taken.”

Bank of America, which maintains a sizable outpost in Baltimore, said it was also focusing on safety.

"We’ve taken appropriate steps to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, which includes closing branches and administrative facilities in the affected area," spokeswoman Nicole Nastacie told HuffPost.

Morgan Stanley also has operations in the city, but a representative did not return calls requesting comment. The University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland did not immediately respond, either.

The rioting Monday in West Baltimore marked the most violent clashes between citizens and police in the United States since the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, over the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown last August.

This story has been updated with statements from Johns Hopkins Hospital and Loyola University.

Troubled For-Profit Corinthian Colleges Shutting Down As Education Department Faces Bill

Corinthian Colleges Inc., once one of the nation's largest chains of for-profit colleges, announced Sunday it is abruptly shutting down after failing to find buyers for its roughly 30 remaining campuses, leaving up to 16,000 students in the lurch and potentially costing the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in forgone federal student loan payments.

"What these students have experienced is unacceptable," Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said in a blog post Sunday.

The California-based chain at its peak operated more than 120 colleges with more than 110,000 students across North America under the Everest, Wyotech and Heald brands. Last July, under pressure from the Education Department over a paperwork dispute, the company struck a deal with the Obama administration to sell or close all of its campuses over the following six-month period in order to avoid what the Education Department described as an "immediate closure," or exactly what has happened with the company's Sunday announcement.

The closure is effective Monday. Corinthian students were told in a statement posted on the company's website and via email that the company is trying to make arrangements with other schools that would enable Corinthian students to complete their studies elsewhere. Students with federal student loans who choose not to complete their programs would be eligible for full loan cancellations. Unless the Education Department recoups the money from the financially troubled company, taxpayers would eat the cost.

Corinthian said 28 campuses are closing. The Education Department put the total at 30, which includes two satellite campuses that it counts as separate locations.

"For too many students, Corinthian turned the American dream of higher ed into a nightmare of debt & despair," Rohit Chopra, the federal consumer bureau's top student loan official, wrote Sunday on Twitter.

In recent years, Corinthian has been accused by multiple federal and state authorities of systematically lying about its graduation or job placement rates, misleading potential students into enrolling and forking over tens of thousands of dollars to obtain credentials many critics believe to be of dubious value. The company annually received some $1.4 billion in federal financial aid for its students, according to the Education Department.

Corinthian finalized a deal in February to sell more than 50 of its campuses to one of the Education Department's contracted debt collectors in a transaction that effectively bailed out the company and deprived nearly 40,000 students of the chance to have their federal student loans canceled. The forced sale followed months of alleged delays by the company to turn over sufficient paperwork about its job placement rates to the Education Department.

Last summer, the department had limited Corinthian schools' access to federal financial aid, a move that ultimately set off a chain of events that culminated with Sunday's announcement. The company in a statement blamed federal and state regulators for its abrupt closure.

The surprise announcement that the company will immediately shut down its remaining campuses across five states now puts the Education Department in the exact position it had hoped to avoid. The department, led by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, had hoped to either broker a sale of the company's remaining campuses -- keeping them open for current students -- or help the company strike agreements with other schools to allow Corinthian students the opportunity to complete their programs.

"We believe that we have attempted to do everything within our power to provide a quality education and an opportunity for a better future for our students," Jack Massimino, Corinthian's chief executive, said in a statement. "Unfortunately the current regulatory environment would not allow us to complete a transaction with several interested parties that would have allowed for a seamless transition for our students. I would like to thank our employees for their selfless dedication and commitment to fulfilling the educational and career goals of all of our students."

The company said it had been in what it described as "advanced negotiations" with several potential buyers for its Heald campuses as well as other schools that would take in some Corinthian students in California wishing to complete their studies. But the company said its efforts were stymied "largely as a result of federal and state regulators seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions on buyers and teach-out partners."

Kamala Harris, California's attorney general, has a pending lawsuit against the company alleging it misled students and investors about its job placement rates. The state of California in 2007 settled a previous investigation into Corinthian after amassing evidence that the company allegedly inflated its job placement rates.

Several state attorneys general and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have sued the company, alleging it lied to potential students. The Education Department meanwhile allowed the company's schools to continue enrolling students and tap taxpayer funds for its bottom line.

Mitchell said Sunday that the Education Department would send its staff "to as many campuses as possible to talk directly with students." The department was in discussions with state community college systems to ensure that Corinthian students could continue their studies, he added, while some students could be eligible for debt forgiveness.

The for-profit college industry has been in consumer advocates' crosshairs for years. Though students at for-profit schools constitute only 13 percent of total enrollment at higher education institutions, they represent nearly half of all loan defaults, according to the Education Department. The Obama administration has been trying to rein in for-profit schools and limit dodgy schools' access to federal financial aid.

Corinthian Colleges spawned a growing movement of so-called "debt strikers" who are refusing to make payments on their federal student loans in protest against the Education Department's treatment of the company and its current and former students. A group of roughly 100 former Corinthian students that calls itself the "Corinthian 100" has been publicly pressuring the department to cancel all debts owed by current and former Corinthian students because of the company's alleged deception related to its job placement and graduation rates.

"We have kept students at the heart of every decision we have made about Corinthian," Mitchell said last month.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) in March endorsed the debt strike. The former Corinthian students "have decided that this is predatory lending and they're not going to repay their debts," said Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee.

Duncan has said his department is considering their request. Full debt forgiveness for all current and former Corinthian students would likely cost the Education Department billions of dollars, especially because it's unlikely the department could get the company to cover losses from forgone federal student loan payments.

The federal student loan program has generated tens of billions of dollars in profit in recent years, thanks to the spread between high interest rates paid by student loan borrowers and the relatively low rates paid by the government in financing its annual budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the program will continue to generate billions in annual profits in the coming decade.

Last month, the Education Department accused Corinthian's Heald campuses of misleading students and accreditation agencies about its graduates’ employment rates. The company showed a “blatant disregard” for the federal student loan program after the department said it found 947 false job placement rates dating back to at least 2010.

The Education Department levied a $29.7 million fine, a ban on enrolling new students, and a requirement that Heald prepare plans for its thousands of students to either graduate or transfer to a new school.

The department has yet to announce the results of its broader investigation into allegations the company's other schools lied about its job placement rates.

Comcast Calls Off Time Warner Cable Merger

Comcast has scrapped plans to merge with Time Warner Cable in a $45.2 billion deal that would have combined the country’s two largest cable and broadband providers, according to a Bloomberg report Thursday.

The move comes a day after the Federal Communication Commission said it planned to oppose the deal, joining lawyers from the Justice Department who felt it would not help consumers. The FCC said it would issue a “hearing designation order” that would prolong the deal, making it more difficult and expensive for Comcast.

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice and Time Warner Cable spokesman Bobby Amirshahi both declined to comment. But Bloomberg reported that a formal announcement of the terminated deal would come by Friday.

The merger faced vehement opposition from many who claimed such a deal would stifle competition by creating a monopolistic beast. As it is, Americans have limited options compared to other developed countries for buying cable or Internet. A combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have represented 54 percent of the entire U.S. market.

The reportedly dead merger marks a second failure for Comcast in just the past year. The Philadelphia-based behemoth suffered a loss when the FCC adopted open Internet rules that enshrine net neutrality -- the idea that broadband providers “cannot block, throttle, or create special ‘fast lanes’” for any Internet content.

This is a developing story and has been updated. Simon McCormack contributed reporting.

Upcoming BMW Lets You Stand Outside Car While Parking It

There may soon be a solution to the woes of parallel parkers everywhere.

The forthcoming BMW’s 7 Series will maneuver into parking spots without a driver sitting in the car. The drivers navigates the control from outside the vehicle by using a new key fob, which combines a remote control and an LCD screen and can guide the car in and out of tight spots and garages.

According to Gizmodo, the car's official design hasn't been unveiled yet. No word yet on when the 7 Series will be released, either.

Check out the feature in action in this promotional video BMW released April 18:

Mercedes-Benz has a similar automated parking feature called "active parking assist," though the driver must remain in the car to operate the accelerator and brake pedal.

Though the 7 Series is not a true driverless car, it may pit BMW once more against Tesla, which announced recently that it would roll out self-driving software for its cars as early as this summer. The software update, which is for Model S sedans sold after last October, would free up drivers on long commutes on major highways. Tesla plans to equip forthcoming Model X sports utility vehicles with the autopilot feature, as well.

“We can basically go between San Francisco and Seattle without the driver doing anything,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said of the feature.

BMW released its own mass-produced electric car, the i3, early last year. At around $45,000, it is significantly cheaper than Tesla’s Model S, which has a price tag of $70,000, and drives between 80 and 100 miles between charges. BMW previously tested a "remote valet parking assistant" app on the i3, allowing the vehicle to park itself and come back to pick up the driver. But the app would require detailed maps of every parking garage, casting doubt on its practicality.

Mercedes-Benz and Google have been testing their own driverless cars in recent months. The Mercedes-Benz F015 Luxury in Motion was teased at the Consumer Electronics Show last year, and popped up in San Francisco last month.

Google also patented external airbags and bumpers for its self-driving car just a few weeks ago. The design would protect pedestrians in the case of a collision, and signals an early effort to respond to ethical debates over automated control.

Apple Makes New Commitment To Fight Climate Change, But Has A Long Way To Go

Apple on Monday released its 2015 Environmental Responsibility Report, underscoring its commitment to lessening the environmental impact of its products and operations. "We don’t want to debate climate change. We want to stop it," the company stated in the report.

But Apple still has a long way to go when it comes to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, cutting down on paper use and eliminating the amount of toxic substances in its devices.

The report said Apple's overall carbon footprint increased between 2013 and 2014, in part because the company is selling more products. It also noted that Apple is working to make products less carbon-intensive to manufacture and use.

The report went on to say that renewable resources power 100 percent of Apple's data centers, corporate offices and retail stores in the United States, as well as 87 percent of its global facilities. In addition, all of its U.S. data centers have been powered with 100 percent renewable energy since 2012.

Yet the report says that the energy used by Apple facilities in the 2014 fiscal year represented only 1 percent of the company's carbon footprint. By contrast, manufacturing accounted for a whopping 73 percent of the company’s 34.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

While the new report doesn't address the volume of paper products used for packaging, it does says that during the 2014 fiscal year, "over 80 percent of the paper and corrugated cardboard used in our iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, and Apple TV packaging came from certified sustainably managed forests, controlled wood sources, or recycled materials."

Last week, Apple announced it was purchasing 36,000 acres of forest -- 3,600 in North Carolina and 32,400 in Maine -- to supply paper for its packaging.

The new report also addresses toxic substances in electronics and Apple's efforts to reduce or eliminate these materials for the sake of the environment and human health. "Our goal is to make not just the best products in the world, but the best products for the world," the company wrote.

A 2014 BBC investigation showed allegedly poor working conditions and exhausted employees in undercover footage from a Chinese factory producing Apple products. Apple's previous reports on its suppliers show that "30 percent [of them] don't comply with the company's own safety standards and 18 percent fail to comply with standards on hazardous chemical exposure," according to Wired.

Apple's environmental efforts are led by Lisa Jackson, who joined the company in May 2013 after serving as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2009 to 2013. Her voice can be heard in the "Better Starts Here" video Apple released alongside the report. The ad touts plans to build a 40-megawatt solar farm in China to offset the electricity used by its offices and stores in that country.

"We're directing our innovation into conservation, to get to net zero," Jackson says in the video. “We are learning more and more about new places where we can be better, with renewable energy, hydropower and forest preservation. New ways in which we can leave the world better than we found it."

At last year's annual shareholder meeting Apple CEO Tim Cook told members of a think tank skeptical of manmade climate change that they should ditch Apple stock if they didn't agree with the company's environmental efforts.

Both Google and Microsoft also have made commitments to improving their sustainability and offsetting their operations with renewable energy.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

Why 'Sweatworking' Is The New Lunch Meeting

(Reuters) - Sweatworking, the growing practice of meeting clients for a walk, a run or a fitness class, is elbowing networking out of bars and restaurants and into boutique fitness studios.

A yoga, barre or spin class has become the new nine holes of golf, fitness experts said, chased by a post-workout smoothie rather than a three-martini lunch.

“Sweatworking was born out of a desire to connect with clients on a deeper level that wasn’t so sales-y,” said Sarah Siciliano, 32, an advertising executive who has been entertaining clients with workouts. “A lot of sales jobs revolve around drinking.”

Siciliano, who is based in New York City, considers taking her mostly female clients, who range in age from 22 to 52, to yoga, spinning, bootcamp and dance studios a great tool to develop relationships.

“People like to move along with the trends,” said Siciliano, who organizes her workout events.

“I do all the leg work but I exercise everyday anyway so for me it’s a win-win,” she said. “If you can knock out a client event and your workout at the same time, why not?”

Sweatworking began in the advertising world, but has spread to more traditionally conservative professions such as law and banking, according to Alexia Brue, co-founder of the wellness media company Well+Good.

“Now a lot of client entertaining in many industries has moved into boutique studios,” she said, “especially to those with workouts that aren’t super awkward, or super-sweaty to do with a client.”

Gabby Etrog Cohen, vice president of public relations and brand strategy at SoulCycle, a national chain of 39 indoor cycling studios, said in four years sweatworking has become a regular part of her business.

“We get a mixed bag, a lot of people in financing and advertising,” said Cohen. “We have groups that come in every week. One group comes every Thursday.”

Part of the appeal, she speculates, resides in the dim studio lights.

“There’s something about not wanting to sweat in front of clients,” she said. “We ride in the dark so there’s a sense of anonymity.”

For 45 minutes and $35 per class, the studio provides an alternative to the traditional four-hour round of golf.

Cohen said the rise of sweatworking marks the distance traveled from the chain-smoking, inebriated lifestyle of the 1960’s portrayed in the hit AMC series “Mad Men.”

“We’ve taken ‘Mad Men’ and turned it on its head,” she said.

(This version of the story corrects HBO to AMC in the second-to-last paragraph)

Here's What Uber Is Doing For Its Very Best Drivers

Uber is the poster child for disruption and technological innovation. Yet with a new program meant to inspire its drivers, the startup is deploying a pretty old-school tactic: an employee-of-the-week award for drivers.

There's a bit of a twist though -- Uber drivers aren't technically company employees.

Each week, Uber awards two drivers a Sixth Star for exceptional service. Winners get a $1,000 American Express gift card, some corporate schwag -- hat, medal of honor, etc. -- and public recognition for being awesome.

“We want to recognize service for which our five-star rating system is simply not enough,” Uber vice president David Richter told The Huffington Post in an email, referring to how the ride-share app lets customers rank drivers on a scale of one to five stars.

Marketing and management experts said the program, which was just expanded globally, has the potential to inspire drivers, and signals to customers that Uber values drivers.

“It’s a nice way to say we care about high quality and we’re working on ways to reinforce it,” said Derek Rucker, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management. Rucker said the program could also motivate Uber drivers to provide better service.

Yet some Uber drivers HuffPost spoke with hadn’t yet heard about the awards. A few said that adding a “sixth star” does little to alleviate problems they have with Uber’s five-star rating system, a source of anxiety.

Now valued at more than $41 billion, Uber is growing rapidly. It now operates in 300 cities across 56 countries. Slowly, Uber seems to be doing more for its growing fleet of drivers, who operate essentially as small business owners. Uber calls them "driver partners," and they don't receive benefits like health insurance, paid vacation or sick leave.

A month after starting Sixth Star this fall, the company also launched a rewards program that offers its drivers discounts on auto care and wireless services, as well as help finding health insurance. In March, the company launched an internal magazine to foster more community between drivers.

Launched in October and expanded globally last week, the Amex-sponsored program gives awards to two Uber drivers each week for exceptional service. One driver is chosen because she has the highest rating and number of trips in a given region. The other driver is nominated by an Uber passenger for doing something extraordinary. The winners rotate between six regions, in Europe, Asia/Pacific and three areas in the Americas. While the company has done things like this at the local level, the program is one of its first global marketing pushes. So far, 28 Uber drivers have won.

Edith Woodie, a driver in Atlanta, won a Sixth Star for voluntarily helping a man healing from amputation surgery do his grocery shopping inside the store -- instead of just dropping him off and leaving.

Ideen Barimani, an Uber X driver in Baltimore with the highest rating on the East Coast (4.96), told HuffPost that winning a Sixth Star was a “validation” of all the hard work he puts into the job. Barimani said he pulls in anywhere from $600 to $800 a week driving his grey Toyota Corolla for around 40 to 50 hours. The 35-year-old takes Uber’s advice on customer service -- keeping his car stocked with bottled water and Starbursts, Hershey miniatures and other candies. He also provides riders with chargers for their phones. And, as a self-professed animal lover, he’s totally cool with carting around passengers’ dogs. He’s open to conversation with passengers, if desired. “If riders want to be left alone, I get the hint,” he told HuffPost.

Sixth Star winner Ideen Barimani.

Giving workers prizes for doing their jobs doesn’t always work out the way business owners and managers plan. In close-knit workplaces, employee of the month awards can sow seeds of animosity, said Kellogg’s Rucker. “You create unnecessary competition in the workplace. Someone wins and everyone else is upset.”

But Uber’s program avoids some of the classic pitfalls, said Rucker. Uber has a huge and disparate workforce. It’s unlikely the program will foment jealousy of management “favorites” or some kind of worker revolt.

“Given it’s a rare award and a big workforce, it’s more like winning the lottery than a typical award,” said Timothy Gubler, a doctoral candidate at Washington University who has researched employee awards. "People don’t feel like ‘I should’ve won the lottery,'” he said.

Uber drivers had a mixed reaction to the program. “If you give me a thousand dollars, that means I’m doing my job right,” New York Uber driver Mina Morgan said.

Sixth Star winner Edith Woodie.

Others either hadn’t heard about it yet, or were more skeptical. “The award is a marketing ploy. It isn’t going to encourage drivers to do anything they weren’t going to do,” said Casandria Harris, a driver in San Antonio. “It might encourage passengers to acknowledge drivers who go above and beyond."

Beyond the Sixth Star, drivers said the ratings system can be unfair. Ratings can drop for reasons beyond their control -- like traffic, or if Uber raises its prices because of increased demand. Driving people around at night -- when they're more likely to be inebriated -- also puts the rating at risk. Uber said its system accounts for this, and notes that the more rides drivers give, the harder it is for one bad rating to knock them back. Still, it's nerve-wracking -- if the rating drops below a certain threshold, drivers could lose their job.

Over the past year, a few Uber drivers were charged with rape and assault, and there was a big dust-up last fall over the company’s interactions with journalists. Partly due to the bad publicity, the percentage of U.S. adults who’ve actually heard of Uber grew to nearly 60 percent from about 45 percent over the past four months, according to data from market research firm YouGov BrandIndex.

One big challenge for Uber is getting more people to sign up, said YouGov CEO Ted Marzilli. He noted the brand gets very favorable ratings from those who actually use the service. A program like Sixth Star, which personalizes drivers and tells their stories, could help gain more goodwill for the brand -- though it’s still in the early stages.

Uber customers will like knowing their ratings could help their drivers, said Uber user Erin Flior, a vice president at communications firm Levick who works on digital marketing campaigns. Flior doesn’t always take the time to rate her drivers, but now that she knows something positive could come out of it, she said she’ll be doing it more often.

--Timothy Stenovec contributed reporting.

6 Of The Fastest-Growing Jobs In America Pay Low Wages

Retailers and policymakers are finally hearing workers’ call for wage hikes, but it may be a little too late.

Low-wage industries in the United States are growing rapidly, but wages aren't. A new report from the National Employment Law Project, a wage advocacy group, found that six of the occupations that are expected to grow the fastest in the coming years are also jobs that pay a median wage of under $15 per hour -- which is barely enough to make ends meet.

These high-growth fields, according to the NELP report, include retail sales employees, food and service workers, nursing assistants, laborers and freight movers, personal care aids, janitors and cleaners (excluding housekeepers and maids).

“These are jobs that aren’t going anywhere,” said Irene Tung, one of the report’s co-authors along with Paul Sonn and Yannet Lathrop. “You can’t outsource fast food in China. You have to grapple with that. This is where we have to lift wages if we want to begin to rebuild the disappearing middle class in the country.”

Around 46 percent of workers earning less than $15 an hour are over 35 years old, the NELP's report found. “There’s a common perception that these occupations are for teenagers,” Tung told The Huffington Post. “But there are a lot of people spending decades in these jobs and supporting families. It calls into question the kind of economy we want.”

As the baby-boom generation ages, one of the biggest-growing sectors is personal care for the elderly. Wages there are stagnant and turnover is high. “It’s hard to retain good personal care aides because the wages are so low,” Tung said.

The report also notes that the percentages of women and African-Americans making less than $15 per hour are disproportionately large. Female workers make up 48 percent of the total U.S. workforce but represent 54 percent of those making under $15 an hour, per the NELP. African-Americans, who comprise 12 percent of the total workforce, represent 15 percent of those making less than $15.

Workers have become increasingly vocal in their fight for better wages, and they're gradually effecting change. McDonald’s bumped up hourly wages to $9.90 earlier this month, though this applied only to a fraction of employees.

Many workers called the raise insufficient and are continuing to call on McDonald's and other corporate giants to hike wages. On Wednesday, a strike organized by the group Fight for $15, which advocates for a minimum hourly wage of $15 for fast-food employees, began in cities across the U.S and expanded to include demonstrations for other low-earning workers.

In February, retail giant Walmart increased wages to $9 for its lowest-paid workers. Rivals such as T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and Target soon followed suit. But many of these low-income workers rely on government assistance programs, and $9 an hour still forces them to remain tied to Medicaid and food stamps, according to a study by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness.

“Workers have been organizing, and they’ve been able to elevate the conversation about wages in this country,” Tung said. “But it’s still a drop in the bucket. Nine dollars an hour is less than $25,000 a year for full-time workers, and that’s nowhere near enough for them to survive.”

The public is responding in turn and putting pressure on lawmakers. Seattle is currently transitioning to a $15 minimum wage, a year after the city first announced its commitment to a living wage for workers. Voters in San Francisco, as well as Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, approved wage increases last year.

CEO Slashes $1 Million Salary To Give Lowest-Paid Workers A Raise

Three weeks ago, Dan Price took a $930,000 pay cut.

Growing income inequality had been on his mind for months. But as he went for a hike with a friend one afternoon and listened to her describe her struggle with rising rent prices, he realized he had to do something for his own employees.

So Price, the founder and CEO of Gravity Payments in Seattle, decided to raise the minimum salary at his 120-person payment processing company to $70,000. At a company where the average pay was $48,000 per year, the move -- which was first reported by The New York Times on Monday -- affected 70 workers, 30 of whom saw their salaries double.

Most of the money for these raises will come from cutting Price's salary -- which is now $70,000 per year rather $1 million. The rest will come out of the $2.2 million the company expects to earn in profit this year.

“There’s greater inequality today than there’s been since the Great Recession,” Price told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “I’d been thinking about this stuff and just thought, ‘It’s time. I can’t go another day without doing something about this.’”

The $70,000 figure is just below the $75,000 salary pegged in a 2010 Princeton University study as an ideal benchmark for achieving happiness. About 28 percent of Americans said they would feel successful earning at most $70,000 per year, according to a 2012 survey from the jobs site CareerBuilder.

The pay cut won’t affect Price's lifestyle much. He has saved a lot of the money he has earned since starting Gravity in 2004. He said he has no plans to replace his 12-year-old Audi, which has clocked more than 140,000 miles. And his new salary will still allow him to pick up the bar tab for his friends once a month, he said.

“There will be sacrifices,” said Price, 30. “But once the company’s profit is back to the $2.2 million level, my pay will go back. So that’s good motivation.”

In the U.S., the average CEO earns more than 350 times what the average worker does. Seattle has become a hotbed in the fight for higher wages as the city phases in a $15 minimum wage, one of the highest in the country. The city is also home to wealthy investor Nick Hanauer, a self-styled champion for higher pay who has warned his fellow billionaires that pitchfork-wielding mobs will follow them to their private jets if income inequality isn’t addressed.

Rather than see this as a charitable offer to his workers, Price sees the pay raises as an investment. In theory, workers motivated by higher salaries will ultimately attract more business and handle clients better.

“This is a capitalist solution to a social problem,” Price said. “I think it pays for itself, I really do.”

Uninsured Rate Gets Lower And Lower, Thanks To Obamacare

WASHINGTON-- The Affordable Care Act was designed to slash the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance, and it's working.

The uninsured rate fell to 11.9 percent during the first quarter of this year, 1 percentage point below the rate at the close of 2014, according to the findings of a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index poll published Monday. The decline coincides with the start of benefits for new Obamacare enrollees at the beginning of 2015.

The latest uninsured figure from the Gallup survey is the lowest since the polling firm began tracking the number in 2008, and contributes to a remarkable decline of 5.2 percentage points in the share of people without health coverage since the end of 2013, just before the first wave of Obamacare health insurance enrollees joined the ranks of the insured.

Source: Gallup

African-Americans, Hispanics and people with low incomes saw the greatest gains in insurance coverage, Gallup found.

Some of the increase in the proportion of Americans with health coverage likely is related to the improving job market, and the health benefits provided by employers, Gallup notes. But the pollsters conclude that Obamacare is mostly responsible for the current trend because the uninsured rate is lower than it was in early 2008, when the economy was in recession.

About 12 million people are covered by private health insurance obtained via the exchanges, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. A separate analysis published by the department last month estimates that 16 million fewer Americans are uninsured because of the Obamacare coverage expansion, including the exchanges and Medicaid.

Were more states to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, the uninsured rate would fall more sharply, as it did in Indiana earlier this year. Previous surveys showing state-by-state numbers illustrate that Obamacare's effect on the uninsured is diminished by states' refusal to expand Medicaid.

Although Montana appears poised to adopt the Medicaid expansion this month, efforts in states such as Alaska, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah this year have been stymied by Republican opposition. Almost 5.5 million people had enrolled into Medicaid because they qualified under the expansion in 28 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services reported Friday.

The sharp reduction in the uninsured rate since Obamacare benefits began to take effect last year could soon be undone, however. The Supreme Court is slated to rule in June ona lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that claims the Affordable Care Act's subsidies can only be provided in 13 states and the District of Columbia, which operate their own health insurance exchange marketplaces, not in the federally run exchanges in the rest of the country.

A high court ruling for the plaintiffs would invalidate the subsidies received by more than 85 percent of exchange enrollees and destabilize the insurance markets in states with federal exchanges. The Rand Corp. estimates this would result in 9.6 million people becoming uninsured.

Paid Maternity Leave Could Be The Key To Making More Women Leaders

There are all kinds of good reasons for the U.S. to finally catch up to the rest of the world when it comes to paid maternity leave.

Here’s another: Giving parents paid time off after a child is born helps launch women up the corporate ladder and into the boardroom, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, commissioned by Bank of New York Mellon.

The report, presented at a conference this week in London, looked at the percentage of women on boards at 1,002 companies worldwide from 2004-2013. Unlike many other studies of gender in the boardroom, the researchers also considered how long women stayed on boards.

“Getting women on the board is very different from keeping them there,” lead researcher Sucheta Nadkarni, a management professor at Cambridge, told The Huffington Post.

The study looked across different countries to see what kinds of policies and cultural traits were linked to more women in the boardroom. They found that simply having a quota, requiring a certain percentage of women, doesn’t cut it when it comes to longevity. Quotas lend themselves to tokenism -- women for the sake of women.

Norway, which mandates that women make up 40 percent of a corporate board, leads the pack on gender diversity in the boardroom -- but is nowhere near the top when it comes to retaining women on the board.

The study found that the strongest driver of women in the boardroom was what the authors call “female empowerment” -- the percentage of educated and employed women in a country.

“If educated and employed women play a stronger role in the marketplace, there’s a strong incentive for companies to make a board gender-inclusive to better serve their markets,” Nadkarni said.

Procter & Gamble is a good example here. The company, which makes a broad array of household products, caters heavily to women. And it's made gender inclusiveness a priority. Right now P&G’s board is 50 percent female.

A higher percentage of working, employed women also widens the labor pool -- meaning there are more women with a shot at the top.

Here are the top 10 countries for female empowerment, according to the data:

1. Australia

2. Norway

3. Denmark

4. Finland

5. Ireland

6. USA

7. Sweden

8. Netherlands

9. United Kingdom

10. France

Not only do Australia, Norway and Denmark rank highest for female empowerment, they have better maternity and child-care provisions than the United States. The researchers also found that the Scandinavian countries on the list more strongly value gender egalitarianism, another key factor in getting women up the ladder.

The U.S. ranks sixth for female empowerment.

Part of the problem in the U.S. is the percentage of females who are in the labor force hasn’t budged much over the years. The percentage of U.S. women working has ticked up only one percentage point to 75 percent since 1990. We're held back, in part, by pitiful maternity leave and child-care policies. Without supportive policies, more women find themselves forced out of the workforce.

The authors of this report emphasize that to help keep women working (and get them onto boards), you need strong policies like paid leave for mothers and fathers, breast-feeding work breaks, the right to return to work and flexible hours. The more women who can stay in the workforce, the more likely it is that a few of them reach the boardroom.

The U.S. federal governmen offers new parents only 12 weeks unpaid leave -- if they work at a company with more than 50 employees. The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't require employers to offer workers some kind of paid parental leave. And until the 2010 passage of Obamacare there were no concrete federal protections for women to take lactation breaks at work.

The report found other societal factors and cultural proclivities that help get women in the boardroom -- including the number of women in politics and corporate governance guidelines that focus on gender (not quotas, but more general provisions).

Provocatively, the researchers found that the more assertiveness is valued in a country, the more likely it is that women who obtain board seats, keep them. The U.S. ranks high for assertiveness, and is among the most successful countries at keeping women in the boardroom.

If we could only get our act together on the policy side, we could really move the needle.

The Future Of Driving, In One Provocative Chart

In the future, only rich people will own cars and only robots will drive them.

That’s the takeaway from a new research note from Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas. Like Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, he predicts that improvements in self-driving technology will eventually lead to bans on human driving on most roads.

Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, which have already been widely adopted in major urban centers, have paved the way for cities, and eventually suburbs, to adopt mega-fleets of public vehicles that will taxi passengers around. This will dramatically lower the cost per ride to about 25 cents per mile, which is roughly one-tenth of what a traditional taxi costs, Jonas said. He provides no clear timeline for when this might occur.

By contrast, wealthy people -- at least in the near-term -- will own self-driving vehicles, a fact on which Mercedes-Benz and Tesla seem to be banking.

Again, Jonas provides no clear timeline. But an increasing number of luxury carmakers are already adding autonomous features to their vehicles. In October, Tesla's Musk estimated that fully driverless cars will be on the road by 2023.

Here’s how the chart breaks down:

• Quadrant 1: Today, most drivers own or lease their own vehicles, which they drive themselves. Autonomous driving technology is only beginning to emerge.
• Quadrant 2: Over the past few years, ride-hailing services such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar have alleviated the need to own a car in many major cities, making a driver much more accessible. Jonas said this is a logical step toward the so-called mega-fleets of public, autonomous cars.
• Quadrant 3: Over the next decade, rich people will likely swap out the cars they drive for cars that drive themselves. Already, Tesla is planning to roll out a version of its Model S sedan that has limited autopilot features sometime this summer. The latest version of the car, announced on Wednesday, starts at $67,500 after a Federal Tax Credit.
• Quadrant 4: This is the final evolution in the car industry and there is no clear date for when this will come to fruition. But with few exceptions, most people will be driven by cars that are either a public utility or part of a privately-owned fleet that users subscribe to use. At this point, laws will likely restrict human driving to select roads, Jonas wrote. Other forms of public transportation, such as subway systems, may become obsolete.

The CEO Who Took On Indiana's Anti-LGBT Law -- And Won

For Marc Benioff, the fight against Indiana's widely criticized "religious freedom" law was personal.

The Salesforce CEO was a leading voice in the national outcry against Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed last last month. Critics argued that the original version of the RFRA would have permitted businesses to discriminate against LGBT people.

Benioff said his advocacy was an effort to help his employees and customers whom the law might have affected, something he describes as being key to his personal philosophy.

“I’m all for a healthy mind and a healthy body, but I’m also about having a healthy planet and a healthy country and taking care of others that don’t have as much,” Benioff, a habitual meditator, told The Huffington Post on Monday from his vacation home in Hawaii. “That’s my spirituality.”

On March 25, a day before Pence first signed Indiana's RFRA, Benioff became the first major business leader to speak out against the law by threatening to scale back his company's investment in the state. After the governor approved the measure, Benioff swung back even harder, posting what he called the "tweet heard 'round the world," in which he announced plans to cancel all Salesforce programs that would require customers or employees to travel to Indiana. Indeed, it was retweeted nearly 9,800 times and favorited more than 8,300 times and became part part of the national conversation.

The following week, he stepped up his campaign again, promising relocation packages to Salesforce employees in Indiana who wanted to transfer elsewhere.

“CEOs are very much the advocates of their customers and employees, as well as of the environment and local communities,” Benioff said. “The most successful CEOs today are advocates for their stakeholders, not just their shareholders.”

After a week of backlash, Pence approved a revised version of the measure, this time explicitly banning businesses from refusing service because of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Benioff may have been the first major CEO to express his opposition to the legislation, but he was soon joined by others. Corporate giants and organizations from Apple to NASCAR rallied behind LGBT rights groups in Indiana to fight the law.

Still, the Salesforce chief may have been uniquely positioned to champion the cause in Indiana. For starters, San Francisco-based Salesforce became the state's largest tech employer when it acquired the marketing software firm ExactTarget in 2013.

And, Benioff has a lot of powerful friends.

The day after the law passed, he said, he emailed the people he regularly meets and dines with in San Francisco, many of whom are top tech industry executives. Among them was Max Levchin, one of the co-founders of PayPal and the chief executive of financial management site Affirm. Four days after Benioff sent the email, when he flicked on CNBC as he started his morning workout at the gym, he saw Levchin railing against Indiana’s law.

“I was completely blown away,” Benioff said, noting that Levchin went on to organize more than 70 top executives to sign a joint statement condemning the law last week. “This is really the first time that we have started something, and the reason it got started -- the reason it was successful -- is because it was so many different CEOs banding together.”

Benioff has long practiced the "stakeholder theory," a philosophy advocated by World Economic Forum founder and chairman Klaus Schwab, among others. The ideology views shareholders as second to employees, customers, suppliers, communities, trade unions and others who are affected by a company’s commerce. Imbued with a strong sense of corporate responsibility and connected with its community, a firm that's guided by these principles might, the philosophy suggests, earn greater profits over time, translating into higher returns for investors. It’s the corporate equivalent of building good karma.

In the two weeks since Benioff began his campaign, emails have poured in from workers thanking him for stepping up. He said he's never received so much positive employee feedback in his 16-year tenure at Salesforce.

“When the economic hammer came down, that’s when things really started to change,” he said. “There’s one word that was continually used by everyone in Indiana, which was ‘historic.’ That’s something that we in San Francisco, or those of us who don’t live in Indiana, don’t have the perspective to understand, but for them this was historic.”

Benioff pledged to continue the fight by urging the Indiana legislature to add the LGBT community as a protected class under local civil rights laws in its next session.

“The conversation happened the right way,” he said. “It opens the door for another change and another change, probably in the next legislature.”

The CEO admits that not every step in this push to change the law has been graceful. He became the target of some criticism after a CNN interview last Wednesday, in which he said, "One thing that you're seeing is that there is a third [political] party emerging in this country, which is the party of CEOs." The comment provoked pushback from those who already fear the influx of money in politics. Benioff said he misspoke as a result of his excitement over the business community’s rapid response to the situation in Indiana.

Benioff hopes business leaders can continue to push for important legislation that affects their stakeholders, and cites patent and immigration reform as specific examples.

Asked whether Indiana just happened to provide the right place and time for business leaders to unite behind a particular political cause, or whether the momentum would continue to grow, Benioff said he was unsure.

"This was so spontaneous, it happened so quickly," he said. "But CEOs do have a lot of power, like it or not, so they need to bring on a stakeholder philosophy."

Reddit Hopes Ending Salary Negotiations Will Help Women

Ellen Pao is still fighting.

Just weeks after losing a courtroom battle that highlighted tech's glaring gender problems, Pao is trying to solve some of them closer to home: at Reddit, where she is interim CEO.

In an effort to promote gender diversity, Reddit is no longer negotiating salaries with potential hires, Pao told The Wall Street Journal. It was her first interview since losing a gender-discrimination lawsuit against the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers last month.

“Men negotiate harder than women do, and sometimes women get penalized when they do negotiate. So as part of our recruiting process we don’t negotiate with candidates,” Pao told the WSJ. “We come up with an offer that we think is fair. If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation."

More broadly, Reddit is trying to build a team that values diversity, and it's working with diversity expert Freada Kapor Klein to find other ways to create an inclusive environment, Pao told the WSJ.

"We ask people what they think about diversity, and we did weed people out because of that,” she said.

Numerous studies suggest a disparity between men and women who haggle with employers about pay. Not only are men typically more likely to negotiate salaries than women, women are also penalized more than men when they do negotiate.

And when the conversation does turn to money, women are more likely to be judged for their social skills than for their competence, an issue that men rarely face.

Still, it remains to be seen how Pao’s mandate will work in practice.

“If you’ve got a talented female who has another offer from a competitor, are you really going to expect that they’ll take a big salary hit to come to your firm?” asked Malia Mason, a professor at Columbia Business School.

Pao sued Kleiner in 2012, alleging that it discriminated against her because of her gender and later retaliated by firing her. A jury voted in Kleiner's favor on March 27, after a four-week trial, which delved deeply into Pao’s personal life and ultimately focused on her performance at work.

But the lawsuit against Kleiner, which was an early investor in Amazon and Google, renewed scrutiny on the overwhelming gender disparity in tech. Few women hold leadership roles at tech companies, and reports of sexual harassment and misogynistic behavior have plagued Silicon Valley for years.

Pao said she got messages of support from other women throughout the trial. One group of women in the tech industry, led by Lori Hobson, took out a full-page ad in the Palo Alto Daily Post that read, “Thanks Ellen.”

“If I have helped to level the playing field for women and minorities in venture capital, then the battle was worth it,” Pao said after the trial.

East Village's Iconic Pommes Frites Plans To Reopen After Devastating Fire

NEW YORK -- Omer Shorshi’s 18-year-old business is in charred ruins, but he feels lucky.

On most days, the co-owner of Pommes Frites worked in a basement office of the Belgian fry shop, a beloved staple of Manhattan’s East Village. But on the day a gas explosion ripped through the next-door sushi restaurant, sparking a fire that gutted the neighboring buildings, including the one where Shorshi worked, the 43-year-old wasn't there; he had stayed home with his sick son.

The March 26 accident left two people dead and 22 injured. But all seven customers and employees who were in Pommes Frites emerged unscathed. For that, Shorshi said he’s grateful.

Omer Shorshi posing for a photo shoot just weeks before a fire destroyed his restaurant.

“Miraculously, no one [in Pommes Frites] got hurt,” the Israeli-born restaurateur told The Huffington Post on Friday. “No one got even a scratch, so that’s really amazing.”

Now, Shorshi said he and his business partner, Suzanne Levinson, are in the market for a new location to reopen Pommes Frites. Preferably, somewhere in the East Village.

But it’s proving difficult to find something reasonably priced in the same heavily trafficked area, near the neighborhood’s iconic St. Mark’s Place.

“We already had a good relationship with our landlord. We had a good rent over there. It was a really good location,” Shorshi said. “Now we’re probably going to have to go more east to find something affordable.”

Days after the fire, fans of Pommes Frites began offering donations to help resurrect the eatery. But Shorshi refused. The injured victims should be the priority, he insisted.

“But they kept asking us,” he said.

And, at a fries-only restaurant where bills rarely exceed $7, Pommes Frites doesn’t exactly have a massive surplus of cash with which to start over.

The eatery on Thursday began accepting donations via mobile payment platform Square. Just under $1,000 had been raised as of Friday, according to Shorshi.

“We’re going to need to raise quite a lot,” he said. “I don’t think the donations will bring in the big money, but hopefully it will do something.”

It’s difficult to estimate how much money the business needs. Rent is unpredictable, and the renovations needed to refit a retail space into a restaurant -- which is a possibility any restaurant owner faces when looking for a new location -- can drive up the price even further. Plus, Shorshi hopes the next Pommes Frites will be even bigger than the one that burned down.

The quaint-looking fry shop remained in the same location for 18 years.

Once he reopens his doors, Shorshi said he plans to rehire as many of his workers as possible.

“We had people who worked for us for, like, eight years,” he said. “In the fast-food business, that’s unheard of. We try to take care of them as best we can.”

Pommes Frites wants to take care of its fans, too. Shorshi said once the new location is ready, he plans to feed to everyone who donated money to help get it started.

“We can invite everybody for free fries,” he said. “We’re humbled from all this support.”

To donate, tap here.

U.S. Adds 126,000 Jobs In March; Unemployment Rate Lingers At 5.5 Percent

The U.S. economy added 126,000 jobs in March, as the unemployment rate lingered at 5.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

More from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The weakening U.S. economy spilled into the job market in March as employers added only 126,000 jobs, snapping a streak of 12 consecutive months of job gains above 200,000.

The Labor Department says the unemployment rate remained at 5.5 percent. Economic growth has been hammered this year by winter weather, factory slowdowns and lackluster construction activity. The manufacturing, construction and government sectors each shed workers, while hiring at restaurants plunged from February.

Job gains in February and January were revised down by 69,000.

Wage growth remains modest. Average hourly wages rose 7 cents to $24.86 an hour in March.

Past job growth along with cheaper gasoline has yet to significantly boost consumer spending. A continued deceleration in hiring could delay the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates mid-year.

This story is developing...

McDonald's Is Raising Wages For Some Workers

McDonald's is finally giving some of its workers a raise.

The fast-food giant on Wednesday announced plans to give employees a 10 percent pay bump and some extra benefits.

The raise will affect about 90,000 workers at a small fraction of McDonald’s stores. Employees at franchises, which make up the majority of the burger chain's locations, won't be affected.

The increase will lift the average hourly wage at McDonald’s to $9.90, and to more than $10 by the end of next year. The rate currently sits at $9.01, according to the Wall Street Journal.

McDonald's will also let workers at non-franchised locations who have been with the company for more than a year earn up to five days of paid time off each year. Additionally, the company will pay for workers to earn a high school diploma and offer some college tuition assistance. Franchise workers will have access to the educational perks, but not the paid time off.

“We’ve been working on a comprehensive benefits package for our employees -- the people who bring our brand to life for customers every day in our U.S. restaurants,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said in a statement. “We’ve listened to our employees and learned that -- in addition to increased wages -- paid personal leave and financial assistance for completing their education would make a real different in their careers and lives.”

McDonald's did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The move comes two weeks ahead of a planned international strike organized by the movement Fight for $15, which urges fast-food employers to pay workers a minimum wage of $15 per hour.

The group condemned McDonald’s announcement as a “weak move for a company that made $5.6 billion in profits last year.”

“This is too little to make a real difference, and only covers a fraction of workers,” Kwanza Brooks, a McDonald’s employee earning $7.25 per hour in Charlotte, North Carolina, said in a statement. “We’re going to keep fighting until we win $15 and union rights for all fast-food workers and our families.”

McDonald's joins a growing list of low-wage employers, including Walmart and Target, that have raised wages in recent months. Labor advocates point out that wages of $9 or $10 an hour, though well above the national minimum wage of $7.25, are still not enough to pull many families out of poverty.

The raise also marks the latest step by McDonald’s to revitalize its ailing brand amid slumping sales. The company kicked off an aggressive campaign last October to present its food as authentic, going as far as to tout the fact that its meals can, in fact, rot. In January, McDonald's said it would cut more items from its menu as it tries to slim down options. Last month, the chain said it would eliminate human antibiotics from its chicken supply.