Demand for Daikin Applied Americas Inc’s climate control equipment is soaring, and worker recruitment is in hyperdrive, with hiring trips to women’s shelters and immigrant support groups and an open door for applicants with no high school degree or manufacturing experience.
For Minnesota’s healthcare industry, an estimated 5,000 open nursing positions have sparked the invention of a new specialty, the nurse retentionist who is focused on convincing colleagues to stay on the job. It has also prompted talk of capping workloads and led to up to an 18% pay increase over three years for unionized nurses.
Government officials, worried about a constrained labor force in a state where population growth has stalled, have taken a cover-the-waterfront approach. That includes proposals for training in high-growth occupations and subsidies for accommodations at small businesses looking to hire workers with disabilities, efforts to pull members of minority groups off the employment sidelines, a push to reintegrate ex-offenders into the workforce, and grants to study how to speed occupational licensing for immigrants trained abroad.
According to Jeff Drees, Chief Executive of the U.S. unit of Japan’s Daikin Industries Ltd in an interview from the company’s Faribault plant about 50 miles (80.5 km) south of Minneapolis. “We will hire as many as we can take right now because every employee we bring on will just help us reduce our lead time.”
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After raising starting wages from $17 an hour to around $24 and overhauling hiring strategies, Drees still has 200 open jobs at this and two nearby facilities, where he is hoping to add to current staffing of 1,200. Daikin’s order book is bulging, he said, amid demand driven by buildings being upgraded with better air conditioning systems in the wake of the COVID pandemic, a rush of new data centers and electric vehicle plants, and federal dollars flowing under recent infrastructure and environmental legislation.
Number of Palestinians in administrative detention has risen to 1,000 over past year
The number of Palestinian administrative detainees has risen to more than 1,000 over the past year, the highest number in two decades.
For administrative detainees, hunger strikes are often the last recourse. Several have staged hunger strikes lasting several months, often becoming dangerously ill. Previous Israeli governments have at times conceded to some of their demands to avoid deaths in custody.
This time, warnings about hunger striker Khader Adnan’s deteriorating health were ignored, said the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights Israel.
The number of administrative detainees has grown in the past year as Israel has carried out almost nightly arrest raids in the West Bank.
Israel says the controversial tactic helps authorities thwart attacks and hold dangerous militants without divulging incriminating material for security reasons.
Palestinians and rights groups say the system is widely abused and denies due process, with the secret nature of the evidence making it impossible for administrative detainees or their lawyers to mount a defence.