Howard University Hospital doctors fight for labor contract

Resident physicians at Howard University Hospital are pushing to begin labor negotiations after the National Labor Relations Board dismissed a challenge from the university this week that sought to prevent staff from organizing.

Earlier this year, the hospital’s residents voted to form a union, citing concerns about pay, training and workforce quality issues. Those workforce quality issues included losing parking for a time, new rules regarding meals during a 24-hour shifts, including cutting back…

Bill to divert Texas emissions funds to transportation heads to Senate

A bill sponsored by Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa’s, D-Brownsville, to adjust funds sent to the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan easily passed out of the Senate Transportation Committee this week, on its way to the Senate floor.

As of August, just over $1 billion will be sitting in the so-called TERP funding, which is the largest unused balance of any general revenue dedicated fund. Slowing the increase of the fund frees up revenue for transportation needs, which the Texas Department of Transportation…

First-year D.C. lawyers still receive good salaries, but fewer are seeing top-market pay

Good salaries still await law school grads in Washington, though fewer are getting top-of-market pay, according to an annual report from the National Association of Legal Professionals.

Its 2015 Associate Salary Survey says the median pay for first-year associates at large firms in Washington remains $160,000. But that is the case at about 60 percent of D.C. firms this year. In 2009, about 90 percent of firms with more than 700 lawyers reported first-year salaries of $160,000.

NALP says among major…

Want your employees to do yoga? Just make sure there's a reasonable alternative

Plenty of employers breathed a sigh of relief after a proposed federal rule change gave some stability to companies navigating the legal twists and turns of workplace wellness programs.

That’s because, while offering biometric testing or wellness challenges for employees to curb health costs is encouraged by the Affordable Care Act, companies have seen other businesses slapped with federal discrimination lawsuits in recent months over those very programs.

On Thursday, the Equal Employment Opportunity…

D.C.'s sluggish downtown office market takes a bite out of this retailer's lunch business

One telltale sign of the floundering D.C. office market has popped up in an unexpected place: Macy’s in downtown D.C.

The store’s “lunch rush” has declined significantly in the past year, store manager and vice president Valerie Dollison told a group gathered for the “State of Downtown” event hosted by the Downtown D.C. Business Improvement District Friday.

The hours between noon and 2 p.m. used to be the store’s busiest time. Dollison attributed the drop in business to the changing…