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Posts tagged as ““#JUSTKeke””

President Obama Observes Labor Day, Extends Paid Sick Leave for Employees of Federal Contractors

Barack Obama Labor Day
U.S. President Barack Obama waves to reporters after returning to the White House on board Marine One September 3, 2015 in Washington, DC. Obama spent three days in Alaska this week where he became the first sitting president to go to the Arctic Circle. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Showing solidarity with workers on Labor Day, President Barack Obama will sign an executive order Monday requiring paid sick leave for employees of federal contractors, including 300,000 who currently receive none.

The White House wouldn’t specify the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which Obama was to address at a major union rally and breakfast in Boston. The Labor Department said any costs would be offset by savings that contractors would see as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty, but produced nothing to back that up.
Under the executive order, employees working on federal contracts gain the right to a minimum of one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours they work. Stretched out over 12 months, that’s up to seven days per year. The order will allow employees to use the leave to care for sick relatives as well, and will affect contracts starting in 2017 — just as Obama leaves office.
The Obama administration has been working on the executive order for months, and chose Labor Day to announce it as Obama works to enact what policies he can before his presidency ends despite resistance in Congress to laws he’s proposed to improve workplace conditions. That push has reverberated in the 2016 campaign, where Democratic candidates are seeking to draw a distinction with Republicans on who’s most supportive of the middle class.
“There are certain Republicans that said we can’t afford to do this,” said Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. He lamented how paid leave is seen as a partisan issue in the U.S. despite broad support in Europe. “The Republican Party is out of step with similar conservative governments around the world,” he said.
Roughly 44 million private sector workers don’t get paid sick leave — about 40 percent of the private-sector workforce, the White House said. In his speech to the Greater Boston Labor Council’s breakfast, Obama was also to renew his call for Congress to expand the requirement beyond contract workers to all but the smallest U.S. businesses, an idea that has gained little traction on Capitol Hill.
The Labor Day gathering in Boston was attracting other bold-named politicians, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh among them. Vice President Joe Biden, who is considering entering the Democratic presidential primary, was to echo the labor rights theme in a march with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Monday at a Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh.
Unable to push much of his agenda through a Republican-controlled Congress, Obama has in recent years used executive orders with frequency to apply policies to federal contractors that he lacks the authority to enact nationwide. His aim is to lay the groundwork for those policies to be expanded to all Americans. Earlier executive orders have barred federal contractors from discriminating against workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity, raised the minimum wage for contractors and expanded the number of contract workers eligible for overtime.
Although labor groups have hailed those moves, they remain deeply skeptical of Obama’s push to secure sweeping new trade deals with the Asia-Pacific region and with Europe. Many unions have warned that the deals could lead to the widespread elimination of certain types of U.S. jobs.
The White House said it couldn’t estimate how many federal contractors don’t offer paid leave now, citing a maze of state and local laws that make crunching the numbers difficult. Officials also declined to put a dollar figure on how much contractors would face in added compensation costs.
Cecilia Muniz, director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, said the administration has an obligation to get the most out of every federal tax dollar.
article by Josh Lederman, AP via thegrio.com

Keke Palmer To Play First Black Cinderella On Broadway

Keke Palmer
After becoming the youngest talk show host with BET’s “#JUSTKeke,” Keke Palmer adds yet another first to her résumé.
The 21-year-old actress will become the first African-American to fill the glass slippers of Cinderella on Broadway in “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella.”
“It’s honestly one of those things that I can’t believe is really happening,” said Palmer in a press release. “Theater offers so much more than I haven’t been able to access doing film and TV and everything like that. I’m excited to learn all that it has to offer — that focus and that dedication to perform at a certain level every night.”
Keke will also pay homage to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1997 made-for-TV production, starring singers Brandy and the late Whitney Houston. “I feel like the reason I’m able to do this is definitely because Brandy did it on TV,” she said.
She makes her Broadway debut on Sept. 9 at the Broadway Theatre.
Sherri Shepherd used one of her final episodes as a co-host of “The View” today to announce that she will star as the wicked Stepmother.
article by Kristin Corry via Vibe.com (with additions by Lori Lakin Hutcherson)

Keke Palmer Becomes Youngest TV Talk Show Host with BET's "#JUSTKeke" Starting June 30

The daytime talk show space continues to get crowded (Tyra Banks most recently announced that she’ll be jumping back into that space via ABC), as Keke Palmer and BET are hoping to strike gold with a new talk show targeting so-called millenials – essentially those in her age group – which Palmer will of course host.
Tentatively-titled “#JUSTKeke,” the network has ordered an initial 4-week run, starting on June 30, airing daily, Monday to Friday.  Judge Greg Mathis, apparently looking to expand his empire, will executive produce, while Telepictures is producing. 
The 20-year-old Palmer will become the youngest talk show host in TV history, with “#JUSTKeke,” besting the likes of Ricki Lake, who was 25 when she begun hosting her 1990’s daytime talk show, also aimed at her generation at the time.  Per the press announcement, “#JUSTKeke” will cover a variety of topics important to her target audience, as you’d expect, and will also include celebrity guests, and more. “I like to read quotes that touch on how I am feeling,” Palmer said. “If I am dealing with confusion, I will read quotes about clarity and peace of mind. I started posting these quotes on my Twitter page, and the fans responded so positively! I realized that many of them were dealing with similar issues, and the quotes helped to open up a genuine dialogue between us.”
Palmer boasts around 1.4 million Twitter followers, and I suspect a good number of them will follow her to BET when her talk-show premieres at the end of this month.
She will join “The Wendy Williams Show,” “The Queen Latifah Show,” and new series, “The Real” (hosted by Tamera Mowry-Housley, Tamar Braxton, Loni Love, Adrienne Bailon, and Jeannie Mai,) all in syndication on BET (“Latifah” and “The Real” head to the network this fall). Clearly BET is reinforcing its hold on the black female audience (it’s also rebranding Centric to become a network for black women as well).
You’ll recall that ASPiRE, the new television network from Magic Johnson Enterprises, greenlit its first talk show – “Exhale” – last year, with Angela Burt-Murray, Erin Jackson, Issa Rae, Malinda Williams and Rene Syler all hosting. That talkie is still well and alive.  BET has released a first promo for “#JUSTKeke,” calling it “a new kind of Talk Show”:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sHzV7dB3M&w=560&h=315]
article by Tambay A. Obenson via ShadowAndAct