Independent Contract Truck Drivers Can form Labor Unions

(3/21/2014) The lifestyle of truck driver in the U.S. is long-hour and stressful, especially for those long-haul drivers. To work independently and gain flexibility on their working schedule, some truck drivers become "owner operators" as a self employed (or free-lanced) commercial truck drivers and hired by carriers. It supposes that owner operators have more freedom and take more controls about their assignment and working schedules. But these independent contracted truck drives normally have to pay higher insurance for themselves. Some trucking carriers intentionally use independent contractors to take drivers of their employees to avoid payroll taxes and compensations. A positive side-effect of using independent contractors for the carriers is that the contractors cannot form a union since they are not employees.

Now it can be changed. A carrier from California now accepts an agreement with their "independent contractors" and allows them to form a labor union and cannot ask contractors whether they belong to a union or take retaliation. Now the independent contractors can take collective actions against the carrier if they think the working conditions violates their labor right.

Franchise Owner's Dream

(3/7/2014) Recently, several cities raised their minimal wages to improve the workers of low-skill jobs. Business like McDonald, Berger King, Papa Johns or UPS local store... are against raising minimal wages and say their franchises will be forced to raise the price. What they said might be true because many franchises are running in a very thin margin. This article has a very good analysis about Franchise business and the lives of being franchise.

A quote from this article "Franchisees don’t enjoy the market powers and economies of scale of their parent companies. Rather, they run small businesses with narrow profit margins, high failure rates, and plenty of anti-corporate grievances of their own. Anyone who wants to help immiserated fast-food workers, in other words, also needs to spare a few thoughts for their immiserated bosses."

DRM K-Cup for Keurig?

(3/5/2014) Will consumers buy proprietary k-cup coffee just for the Keurig coffee maker? Well, I think Keurig may overestimate its muscle to push consumers around. Time will tell. You may wonder why Keurig wants to take such a risky move. Well, Keurig is selling its coffee machine cheap expecting consumers will buy its k-cups. However, coffee is not like printer toner and people have very different tastes on their preferred coffee. So Keurig cannot really secure its profit from selling its K-kups. Consumers can buy Starbucks or other brandname's cups. There are plenty of knock-offs in the cup and in the coffee machines as well. This disruptive innovation to people's coffee drinking behavior may turn out to be short glory days for Keurig.

Costly Winter for US Airlines

(3/3/2013) It has been a very costly winter for U.S. Airlines. Snow storms pounded onto the U.S. midwest and east one after another and the cost to the airlines can be as high as $6 billion. Passengers are frustrated too. Not only the flights can be canceled, it take a longer time to rebook an alternative flights since the airlines have been cutting flights in increase its load factor. When my flight back to Taiwan early January was canceled due to a snowstorm, my travel was delayed for two full days.

Gender, Porn and Business

(2/28/2014) A female students at Duke University was exposed by a Fraternity about her porn side-job. This news now spread through the campus and caused some troubles to the students. If she can be accepted as a Duke student, why do we care about her side-job that provides some services to the society?

Let us say Hefner (Playboy's publisher) wants to attend the MBA to improve his adult business. Would the business school accept his application?

In-Game Purchase, Are You the Generous 0.15%?

(2/28/2013) Most of mobile games on Apple's iOS and Android are free. To compensate the game development cost, the gaming companies offer in-game purchases to allow players to pass faster, get tips to receive 'treasures', or get 'one more chance' to defeat the enemy. But, how many of them are paying? Not many, only 0.15% of gamer ever pay for in-game purchase but this part counts around 50% of revenue for those game developers. If you are a game developer, how can you design your game to be business sustainable?

Comcast-Time Warner Merge

(2/21/2014) One figure, it may make you think twice about Comcast-Time Warner merger deal. This is a news report from CNN about how this merger may impact consumers. 

I searched 'Comcast' on NBCNews.com (Comcast is NBC's parent company) today (several days after the merge deal surfaced), and this is what you get: nbcnews only has pure factual news reports about this merger, there is no any critical analysis about its impacts to many viewers and internet users. Should the DOJ approve this merger?

Let us see how other news website's turn out. All searches are based on last 7 days (2/14-2/21) and made on 2/21/2014.

Huffington Post (2/21/2014)

New York Times (2/21/2014)

Fox News, (2/21/2014)

CNN.com (2/21/2014)