Top 10 Labour and Employment Headlines from All Regions The Obama administration continues to tout the performance of the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009," signed into law February 17, 2009 and commonly called the "Stimulus Bill" (Public Law 111-5). With the increasing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, many employers may be tempted to search for information on potential job applicants in order to gauge their suitability for the position they are applying for. In anticipation of higher-than-average absenteeism due to seasonal and H1N1 flu outbreaks, employers should implement specific best practices that protect employees, minimize business disruptions and avoid employment claims. The November Visa Bulletin—issued by the U.S. Department of State—continues a positive trend started in October, which made visas available for individuals with older priority dates in the Employment-Based Third Preference (EB-3) category following five months of visa unavailability and priority date retrogression. A joke has been doing the rounds recently of a facebook entry where an individual has updated her status on facebook to refer to the fact that she hates her job and that her boss is always making her do “sh*t” work and that he is a “pervy wan**r.” A raft of new measures are due to be implemented by the UK Border Agency designed to ensure that British workers have every possible opportunity to fill vacancies before employers are permitted to recruit migrant workers. What should you do to ensure you stay on the right side of the law when looking at creative alternatives to redundancy? According to the most recent Department of Labor statistics, from December of 2008 to January of this year, the unemployment rate rose from 7.2% to 7.6%, and job losses in January were “large and widespread across nearly all major industry sectors”. Compensation committees serving public corporations are facing unprecedented scrutiny as they react to recent executive pay reform efforts led by federal lawmakers and agencies, institutional shareholders and corporate governance watchdogs. | 
