Unum has been recognized as one of America’s Best Employers for Women by Forbes magazine.
The Chattanooga-based employee benefits and insurance company scored particularly high for its pay equity, family support, and parental leave policies, and diversity among top executives and board members. The ranking is based on an independent survey from a sample of 60,000 U.S. employees, including 40,000 women. Unum was ranked No. 135 on the list of top emmloyers.
“Our commitment to inclusion starts at the top,” said Liz Ahmed, executive vice president of People and Communications at Unum. “Supporting and advancing women in the workplace is a critical part of our larger focus on inclusion and creating a world-class workplace for our 10,000 employees.”
Unum has a Women’s Professional Network employee resource group and last year Unum introduced six weeks of paid parental leave for all new parents. Additional resources for new moms include flexible working policies, lactation rooms at each of Unum’s offices, free Milk Stork services for mothers traveling for business, a simplified tool to help new moms plan for maternity leave called LeaveLogic, and a Working Moms network.
Other top companies with major staffs in Chattanooga on the Forbes list include Best Buy, No. 7; Keller Williams Realty, No. 8; Whole Foods, No. 51; SunTrust bank, No. 57; BB&T, No. 63; JC Penney, No. 83.
Plant Vogtle staff swells to 8,000
The workforce building two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle in Georgia reached an all-time high this week with about 8,000 workers now on the site.
The two-reactor buildout is the largest “jobs-producing construction project” in the state of Georgia, according Georgia Power Co. Plant Vogtle, which is adding a pair o Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, is the only new commercial nuclear power plant now under construction.
As of May, the project was about 77% complete, according to a Georgia Power fact sheet.
Workers at the plant have just placed the middle containment vessel ring for Unit 4. The containment ring, which wieghs more than a jumbo jet at 2.4 million pounds, is part of the structure that houses the reactor vessel.
Fed pick against credit tightening
Economist Judy Shelton, tapped by President Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, said on Friday she does not favor credit tightening by the Federal Reserve that would harm investors.
In a CNBC interview, Shelton sought to align her past criticism of the Fed’s record low interest rates during the Obama administration with the current attacks by Trump on Fed rate hikes.
“When you consider that over half of American households are invested in mutual funds or pension funds in this market, I don’t want the Fed to pull the rug out from under them by taking a position that is not conducive to further providing liquidity for this growing economy,” Shelton said.
Trump on Tuesday announced on Twitter that he planned to nominate Shelton, currently the U.S. executive director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Christopher Waller, currently the research director at the Fed’s St. Louis regional bank, to two vacant seats on the seven-member Fed board.
Both picks are being viewed as efforts by Trump to influence Fed policy to lowering rates, which Trump for a year has contended are too high.