%1

The Transportation Department will team up with California to provide billions in loans to strengthen the state’s overwhelmed ports and supply-chain infrastructure, in an effort to prevent a repeat of the bottlenecks that have crippled the flow of goods into and out of the United States, officials announced yesterday, the New York Times reported. Most of the projects will probably take years to fund and complete, a department spokesman said, so the initiative will offer little relief for the supply-chain crisis now gripping the globe. But with potentially more than $5 billion in loan money on offer, officials say the investment is a necessary step to bolster the state’s aging infrastructure. The loans could be used to upgrade ports, expand capacity for freight rail, increase warehouse storage and improve highways to reduce truck travel times. The Transportation Department will provide some of the loan money through its own programs, while also working with the California State Transportation Agency to identify other financing opportunities. Backlogs of ships at ports and shortages of shipping containers, truck drivers and warehouse workers have aggravated the delivery delays and rising prices that began when coronavirus outbreaks shut down factories around the world even as demand for goods spiked. The Biden administration moved this month to nearly double the hours that the Port of Los Angeles is open, shifting to a 24/7 operation.

The White House released a $1.85 trillion framework designed to show progress in months of social spending and climate talks that fell short of persuading progressives to quickly approve a parallel, roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, the Wall Street Journal reported. President Biden met with House Democrats in the morning to pitch them on the new framework, a far slimmer piece of legislation than the $3.5 trillion package the party originally had outlined. Democrats have been rushing to complete negotiations on the bill so that they can also move forward with the public-works legislation, which passed the Senate over the summer but has languished in the House. Party leaders initially signaled they wanted to hold a vote on the infrastructure bill later Thursday, but abandoned that plan in the evening in the face of progressive opposition, instead approving a short-term patch for transportation programs that were expiring at the end of the month. Progressives endorsed Mr. Biden’s framework but said they still needed to see more detail of the social policy and climate bill before they could support the infrastructure legislation.

Thousands of unvaccinated workers across the United States are facing potential job losses as a growing number of states, cities and private companies start to enforce mandates for inoculation against COVID-19, Reuters reported. In the latest high-profile example, Washington State University (WSU) fired its head football coach and four of his assistants on Monday for failing to comply with the state's vaccine requirement. The coach, Nick Rolovich, had applied for a religious exemption from the mandate earlier this month. Thousands of police officers and firefighters in cities like Chicago and Baltimore are also at risk of losing their jobs in the coming days under mandates that require them to report their vaccination status or submit to regular coronavirus testing. While controversial, the mandates have been effective at convincing many hesitant workers to get vaccinated against the virus, which has killed more than 700,000 people in the United States. Some 77% of eligible Americans have received at least one shot of a vaccine, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters last week.

Union leaders are pressing to increase their ranks and secure gains for their members as workers demand more from their employers and companies struggle with labor shortages and snarled supply chains, the Wall Street Journal reported. A walkout by production workers for farm and construction machinery company Deere & Co. that began on Thursday followed recent stoppages at snack producer Mondelez International Inc., commercial truck maker Volvo and breakfast-cereal giant Kellogg Co. Labor leaders elsewhere this year have worked to unionize Starbucks Corp. baristas and Amazon.com Inc. warehouse workers, so far with mixed success. Union officials said workers are motivated by lingering frustration over their hours, pay and concerns for their health as some have held front-line jobs through the COVID-19 pandemic. Employees this year have pushed for higher wages, expanded benefits, safer workplaces and added staffing.

Puerto Rico’s financial oversight board agreed to remove proposed public employee pension cuts from a plan to slash the island’s debt, a major concession aimed at securing lawmakers’ approval for a bond restructuring that will put an end to its more than four-year bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. The board included a 8.5% reduction to some pension benefits in the debt adjustment plan that it filed to the bankruptcy court in March. Governor Pedro Pierluisi and island legislators have balked at any pension cuts. The board’s concession was made to end a clash with lawmakers over legislation authorizing new bonds to replace existing debt, an exchange that will allow the government to cut what it owes to investors. Still, the panel maintains Puerto Rico must freeze the teacher and judges pension systems, a move the island’s Senate is trying to block. “When the legislature and governor enact acceptable legislation, the oversight board will amend the plan to eliminate cuts to the accrued pensions of retired public employees and current employees of the commonwealth,” Prof. David Skeel, the board’s chairman, wrote in a letter dated yesterday to Pierluisi and the island’s legislative leaders. The board last week warned that it may be forced to withdraw its debt restructuring plan from the court if lawmakers pass legislation that includes Senate amendments that would increase the island’s expenses by tens of billions of dollars. Such a step would put court confirmation of the plan at risk and prolong a bankruptcy that began in May 2017.

The Labor Department said yesterday that Americans quitting their jobs jumped to 4.3 million in August, the highest on records dating back to December 2000, and up from 4 million in July, the Associated Press reported. That’s equivalent to nearly 3% of the workforce. Hiring also slowed in August, the report showed, and the number of jobs available fell to 10.4 million, from a record high of 11.1 million the previous month. Hiring slowed sharply in August and September, even as the number of posted jobs was near record levels. In the past year, open jobs have increased 62%. Yet overall hiring, as measured by Tuesday’s report, has actually declined slightly during that time. The jump in quits strongly suggests that fear of the delta variant is partly responsible for the shortfall in workers. In addition to driving quits, fear of the disease probably caused plenty of those out of work to not look for, or take, jobs. Nearly 900,000 people left jobs at restaurants, bars, and hotels in August, up 21% from July. Quits by retail workers rose 6%. Yet in industries such as manufacturing, construction, and transportation and warehousing, quits barely increased. In professional and business services, which includes fields such as law, engineering, and architecture, where most employees can work from home, quitting was largely flat.