You’ll spot them at churches, Little League playing fields and senior-citizen centers. They tutor, clean up parks, teach computer skills and build affordable housing–all for no charge.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics newest estimate, 59 million Americans performed volunteer work between September 2001 and September 2002. In its first study of volunteerism in more than a decade, the BLS found 27.6 percent of the population over the age of 16 volunteered.
On average, people put in 52 volunteer hours a year. The numbers are based on a survey of 60,000 households. Other findings include:
More Top Picks Best Bath Aids For Autistic Kids
– More women (31.1 percent) than men (23.8 percent) volunteered–a trend that held across age groups and education levels.
– College graduates had double the volunteer rate of high school graduates and four times the rate of high school dropouts.
– People with jobs were more likely to volunteer than the unemployed or those not in the workforce.
– Among age groups, 25- to 54-year-olds were the most likely to volunteer, with one in three having donated their time.
Bosses put in the hours
Overachievers? Workaholics? Whatever you call them, Fortune 500 CEOs put in longer hours on the job each week and have plans to work longer before retiring than the average worker does, a survey has found.
At-A-Glance, a manufacturer of organizing and time-management products, conducted two surveys: one of 1,385 office workers and one of Fortune 500 CEOs and asked them questions about their workweeks, retirement plans and overtime habits. The results show that not only do companies’ top dogs put in longer hours, they think the rest of us should too.
On average, CEOs put in 15 more hours on the job each week than the people who work for them. Fortune 500 CEOs reported working an average of 61.3 hours; the average office worker logged 46 hours weekly. Of course, a run-of-the-mill CEO of a Chicago-area top 100 company got more than $1 million in cash compensation in 2001, so maybe a few extra hours a week isn’t too much to ask.
And while 67 percent of CEOs plan on working more than 40 years before retiring, the majority of office workers (81.4 percent) plan on calling it a career by then. In fact, nearly half of office workers (47.1 percent) don’t plan on working more than 30 years. (Give them a million bucks for each extra year and you might see a difference in attitude.)
CEOs also think you and I should be working a little harder. They’d like their company’s workday to begin, on average, at 7:47 a.m. start and run till 5:35 p.m. Employees think starting at 10 to 9 and punching out at 5 is fine
Predestined for a layoff?
Laws already are on Boulder, Colo.’s books bar employers from discriminating against residents for race, gender and age. Now the mountain town is the first city to consider a comprehensive measure that would prohibit discrimination based on genetic makeup, according to the National League of Cities.
Advances in science could make genetic testing cheaper and more widely available, city officials say. They fear employers could use a job candidate’s predisposition to diseases such as heart disease or cancer as a way to screen them out.
Already 47 states have some law prohibiting the use of genetic information.
Guilty of bad taste
Technically, two assistant district attorneys in suburban New Orleans were abiding by the dress code when they wore offbeat neckties to court.
But their ties–decorated with a hangman’s noose and the Grim Reaper–were a poor joke, said Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, who told them never to wear anything like them to work again.
The attorneys wore the ties to a pretrial hearing for a man accused of murder and robbery.
His defense attorney complained that the prosecutors were making light of the possibility that his client could get the death penalty.
There’s no word on whether Connick also ruled out ball-and-chain cuff links or prison-stripe Oxford shirts.
More Top Picks Best Charcoal Sets For Women