The Army announced that it will begin a six-month assessment May 14 of an exception to the Direct Ground Combat Assignment Rule for female Soldiers. Of the nine brigades selected for the exception to policy, three are at Fort Hood – 2nd and 3rd Brigade Combat Teams in the 1st Cavalry Division and 3rd Cavalry Regiment.

Texas Business reports:  DALLAS—Brinker International Inc. formed a partnership with the Army Partnership for Youth Success Program (PaYS), which connects companies with young veterans looking for corporate jobs after serving their country.

Texas Business reports: A Wisconsin firm won a $48.2 million contract to aircraft production labor to work in Corpus Christi.

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN— The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped to 7.0 percent in March, marking the seventh consecutive month of decline. March’s unemployment rate was down from 7.1 percent in February, and from 8.0 percent a year ago. Texas’ unemployment rate is significantly below the national unemployment rate of 8.2 percent.

Texas Business reports: A new study by the Department of Health Information Management at Texas State University-San Marcos reveals a far greater need for Health Information Technology (HIT) workers in Texas than previously anticipated.

By the time most students have left campus for the day, Maria Guzman’s job has barely begun. 

At 5:30 p.m., Guzman gathers her 15-person custodial crew for daily stretching exercises in the Neural Molecular Science building at the University of Texas at Austin

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Direct Energy, an energy and energy-related service provider, will hold a job fair on April 18 to fill approximately 200 jobs being created as part of its decision to relocate its head office to Houston, Texas from Toronto, Ontario.

The government recently unveiled a new set of rules outlining better care for immigrants and asylum seekers detained while waiting for their deportation hearings.

Texas Business reports:  Long hours of backbreaking work in the fields, on construction sites or as day laborers, along with being away from family and friends for days, months or years can take a toll on the mental health of migrant workers.

Texas Business reports:  Apple will expand its presence in Texas with a $304 million investment in a new campus in Austin that will create more than 3,600 new jobs.

Texas Business reports:  LONDON—Hays, a specialist recruiting group, opened an office in Houston.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—In an age in which "multitasking" is often cited as a core competency for employees, organizational communication researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have begun to better understand the nuances of how different individuals accomplish multiple tasks.

Texas Business reports:  FARGO, N.D. – Border States Electric is consolidating resources in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

Texas Business reports:  FORT HOOD—Utilizing voluntary retirement and incentives programs, Fort Hood is on the path to meeting the Army-mandated reduction of the civilian workforce.

Texas Business reports:  Having an abusive boss not only causes problems at work but can lead to strained relationships at home, according to a Baylor University study published online in journal, Personnel Psychology.

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—American Airlines and the Transport Workers Union have reached a tentative agreement in principle for the Dispatcher workgroup.

Texas Business reports:  CORSICANA—Snyder's-Lance Inc. announced plans to close its salty snacks manufacturing facility in Corsicana, Texas, effective Friday, February 10, 2012.

Texas Business reports:  Texas is investing $1.8 million through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) in CGI Group Inc. for the creation of the company's new U.S. onshore delivery center in Belton.

Texas Business reports:  China in the not-too-distant future could well rival Mexico as one of the sources for low-wage workers coming into the United States, contends Dudley L. Poston Jr., a Texas A&M University sociologist who also directs the institution’s Asian studies program.

Texas Business reports:  FORT WORTH—Lockheed Martin  will reduce its workforce by 540 positions, officials said.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN –Texas has given $163,000 to train health care workers.

 North Lake College has partnered with Healthcare Associates to provide job training using a $163,482 Skills Development Fund grant from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC).

Texas Business reports: DENTON—A “voluntary separation program” was approved by the Texas Woman’s University board of regents.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Texas gave $367,543 to a turbine company and a small college to train workers for private jobs.

Texas Business reports: A co-worker's rudeness can have a great impact on relationships far beyond the workplace, according to a Baylor University study published online in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Midland had the lowest unemployment at 5.1 percent and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission had the highest at 13.2 percent, according to statistics released today by the state agency that monitors the workforce.

 Texas Business reports: Texas is spending $300,000 through the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) in Office Depot Inc. for the creation of the company's new Inside Sales organization in Austin.

Texas Business reports:  Over the next five years, The University of Texas at San Antonio is slated to receive $2.4 million in funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to continue its MARC research training program, which supports underrepresented and disadvantaged UTSA undergraduates majoring in biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, statistics or engineering. UTSA will use the funding to partially support 12 students each year through 2016.

Texas Business reports:  TEXARKANA—The City of Texarkana will receive $300,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide environmental job training and workforce development to poverty stricken areas in Northeast Texas.

Texas Business reports:  A Green Bay, Wisconsin firm is hiring 300 drivers in Texas and two other states due to the boom in the energy business.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN--About $1.2 million in Texas state money is going into Houston area community colleges and health clinics to train new workers. 

Texas Business reports:  Pay plays a relatively small role in a nurse's decision to stay at or leave a job in a nursing home, according to new research from Rice University, the University of Pittsburgh and Baylor College of Medicine.

Texas Business reports:  WACO—Women who return to work after giving birth are more likely to stay on the job if they have greater control over their work schedules, according to a Baylor University study. 

Texas Business reports:  While several states have recently limited the ability for teacher unions to collectively bargain for their members, teachers will continue to flex their political muscle in a way scholars of policymaking have overlooked: through their pocketbooks, says a Baylor University political scientist.

 Texas Business reports:  Dallas—Southwest Airlines and the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA), who represent the carrier's approximately 260 Appearance Techs, are proud to announce the parties have reached a tentative agreement on a new six-year contract that becomes amendable February 2015.

Texas Business reports: Texas gave a Waco community college $1 million in state funds to train workers for three area manufacturers.

TimeGate's Section 8: Prejudice

Texas Business reports:  Sugar Land’s TimeGate Studios is hiring, according to a notice from the Texas Film Commission.

Texas Business reports:  Texas has more truckers than any other state, according to the American Trucking Associations.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—Austin Texas total nonfarm employment was up by 37,200 jobs in March for a total gain of 251,100 jobs from a year ago. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission had the state's highest unemployment rate at 11.9 percent. Midland had the state's lowest rate at 4.6 percent. 

Texas Business reports:  Austin’s Twisted Pixel hiring, according to a notice from the Texas Film Commission.

Texas Business reports:  Austin—The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) has notified ATI Enterprises Inc. (ATI) that an investigation of graduate employment reports from three of its Dallas-area ATI career schools revealed violations of the Texas Education Code, according to a TWC statement.

Corpus Christi Army Depot

Texas Business reports:  A $7.5 million contract was awarded to supply 800 maintenance personnel to the Corpus Christi Army Depot through near the end of April.  

Texas Business reports:  The ExxonMobil Texas Science and Engineering Fair, cosponsored by the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), continues into its final day.

Texas Business reports:  The Army's reversed its decision of what was claimed to be the illegal conversion of civilian work to private contractors.

Texas Business reports:  Lockheed Martin Services received a $171 milllion contract to support civilian personnel management in San Antonio and Gaithersburg, Maryland, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.

Texas Business reports:  Texas total nonfarm employment was up by 22,700 jobs in February, for a total gain of 254,200 jobs from a year ago.

Texas Business reports:  Stock clerks at Southwest Airlines ratified a new, five-year agreement with the company, Capt. David Bourne, Director of the Teamsters Airline Division, announced.

Texas Business reports:  Sugar Land— The University of Houston System   and TimeGate Studios to establish a cutting-edge motion capture studio in Fort Bend County.

Texas Business reports:  An Austin tech firm has accounted for all employees in Japan in the wake of the March 11 9.0 earthquake that struck Japan as well as the ensuing tsunami.

Texas Business reports: Texas total nonfarm employment was up by 44,100 jobs in January, representing the addition of 253,900 jobs from a year ago, the Texas Workforce Commission reported.

Texas Business reports:  Raytheon will host more than 100 Dallas-area high school students Tuesday for a day of engineering activities, which include guiding the students through a production floor engineering simulation.

Texas Business reports:  Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. has partnered with Amarillo College to provide job training using a $163,278 Skills Development Fund grant from the Texas Workforce Commission.

Texas Business reports:  Texas total nonfarm employment was up by 20,000 jobs in December, representing the addition of 230,800 jobs since December 2009.

Texas Business notes this story by Ed Dutton of Bloomberg:  AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and its flight attendants failed to reach an agreement on a new contract as they finished three days of mediated talks, the first such session in almost eight months.

Texas Business reports:  A $3 million state grant will be used to train several hundred petrochemical workers. 

Texas Business reports:  CALGARY, Alberta—A labor agreement for a significant portion of the $7 billion pipeline that will stretch from Canada to Port Arthur was reached today. 

Texas Business reports:  The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) warned unemployment insurance claimants today of fee-for-filing scams. 

Texas Business recommends this story by Alex Branch of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:  FORT WORTH -- The roiling national debate over whether to stop granting automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants reverberates loudly across Tarrant County.

Texas Business recommends this story by Cindy V. Culp of the Waco Tribune-Herald:  Deportations triggered by a relatively new program that checks the immigration status of people booked into the McLennan County Jail have mostly involved people with no prior criminal history.

Texas Business reports:  The Texas seasonally adjusted unemployment rate remained at 8.2 percent in July, unchanged from June, and continued to trend well below the U.S. seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, announced the Texas Workforce Commission today. 

Texas Business reports:  The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has received numerous complaints from workers who are being prevented from seeking other jobs because training certificates are not being issued by their employers. 

Texas Business notes the following story by Sandra Baker of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:  TD Ameritrade investment brokerage firm received tentative approval for an economic incentive package worth up to $300,000 Tuesday from the Fort Worth City Council to help it expand its operations at Alliance by nearly 500 jobs in the next three years.

 

Texas Business recommends this story by Christy Hoppe at the Dallas Morning News: The glass offices at the nation's leading universities have filled faster than the classrooms, with new layers of administrators added at twice the rate of faculty and instructors, according to a study being released today.

Texas Business reports:  Tribune Company announced today that its new subsidiary, Blue Lynx Media LLC, has opened a shared service center in Lewisville, TX, where it is expected to provide jobs for as many as 200 new employees.  

TexasBusiness.com notes:  WDSGlobal has hired some 460 full- and part-time employees for its call center here and has plans to hire another 200 beginning Aug. 30, site director Jack Kozeny said.  Kozeny said interested people should apply at the call center at Interstate 44 and Airport Drive, reports the Wichita Falls Times Record News.

TexasBusiness.com notes:  When Stephanie Litchauer heard the news about potential massive layoffs at military contractor BAE Systems Wednesday she was at first floored. Then she felt deeply worried about the future of her business and all of Sealy, reports the Houston Chronicle. 

 The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that workers at Aviat U.S. Inc.  are eligible to apply for Trade Adjustment Assistance.  The San Antonio company workers are part of approximately 9,000 workers from companies in 19 states a companies in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, the agency said. 

TexasBusiness.com notes: As North Texas Hispanic leaders cheered a federal judge's decision Wednesday to block the most controversial parts of Arizona's immigration law, two Texas lawmakers said Thursday that they will move ahead with plans to file similar bills to cut the number of illegal workers here.

"Although the federal government handles immigration matters ... if they aren't doing their job, if they aren't securing the border, then the states are not prohibited from doing exactly that," said state Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, a former Arlington mayor pro tem, who will file a bill similar to Arizona's, reports Anna M. Tinsley of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 

TexasBusiness.com notes:  The federal moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling has caused Baker Hughes to move hundreds of employees out of the Gulf of Mexico, CEO Chad Deaton said Wednesday, and could prompt companies to move operations from Houston. Baker Hughes, a Houston-based international oil-field services company, has moved 300 of its 2,100 Gulf employees overseas and is moving 25 percent of its assets, reports Salvador Rodriguez of the Houston Chronicle. 

TexasBusiness.com recommends: A federal judge’s decision to block provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law was not welcomed by some in McLennan County who want America’s borders toughened. But a local immigration lawyer said the decision was the only way to go.  Susan Nelson, a Waco attorney who specializes in immigration law, said immigration regulation is a function of the federal government, not the states, reports Bill Teeter of the Waco Tribune-Herald. 

TexasBusiness.com notes:  FORT WORTH -- City Council members are considering doing away with a guaranteed pension for newer employees as the council struggles to bring Fort Worth's spending in line with the drop in taxes.

Local officials who help immigrants get legal status said they have seen an increase in calls since Arizona implemented a stringent immigration law.  But many requests for help will go unfulfilled, reports Cindy V. Culp of the Waco Tribune-Herald. 

COMBINE — The North Texas town of Combine is on the Dallas-Kaufman county line. The community, with a population of 2,159, had a police force of 13 on Saturday. On Sunday, that number was down to two, and some officers dismissed on Saturday night say politics is behind the City Council's action, reports Jonathan Betz of WFAA.

Texans whose unemployment subsidies recently ended should start receiving payments again in the next week or so now that the benefits have been extended, the state announced Friday.

President Barack Obama on Thursday signed legislation extending jobless benefits through November for millions of Americans who have been out of work for more than six months and saw the end to jobless checks beginning June 2, when their benefits lapsed, reports Patrick Danner of the San Antonio Express-News.

TexasBusiness.com recommends this story by J.B. Smith of the Waco Tribune-Herald: Grecia Cantu gazed into the faces of her classmates on a day last June and stifled an urge to cry.  As thousands watched at the Heart O’ Texas Coliseum, the 2009 valedictorian of University High School found her voice cracking anyway as she thanked her teachers and urged her classmates to reach for what seemed unreachable.

It's Wednesday, Harold Reed is moderating a weekly meeting of 40 unemployed human resources professionals at Cornerstone Bible Church in Southlake, and he's still chapped about a local radio host's on-the-air comments a day earlier.”Anybody got any job postings to share?" asks Reed, a corporate trainer out of work for 21 months. "Because some of us are looking for work. According to Mark Davis, we're all sitting around doing nothing.” Two hands go up. Two jobs. And so it goes, reports Scott Nishimura of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  

New faces will soon join the ranks at Spherion. The local call center got the green light to add 100 additional customer service agents to its already 500-person employee base, said Ruben Trevino, the company's on-premise manager, reports Alison Miles of the Victoria Advocate.