fortune--2020-05-30--‘Best three months of my life’: Overworked lawyers are actually loving lockdown

Hugh Sandler used to commute two hours a day between Grand Central Terminal and his home in the New York City suburbs. Like thousands of other attorneys who logged long hours in Manhattan law firms, Sandler regarded coming into the office as an essential part of his job. Then came March, which marked the first time he and many other lawyers worked full days at home. For Sandler, it was a major adjustment—but also a surprisingly pleasant one.
“My experience has been very positive. I have a 7-month-old and being at home at this time has created a lot of additional benefits, including that I can be around for him,” he says.
Other lawyers—many working from home for the first time in their careers—described a variety of emotions, ranging from relief to something many haven’t felt since college: sheer, unadulterated delight. “Best three months of my life,” said one Chicago lawyer who has gained two hours a day of time with his family since giving up his commute.
Their experience reflects how the pandemic has shaken up the culture of corporate law firms. That culture, known in the legal world as “Big Law,” is characterized by long hours that obliged many lawyers to stay at the firm till 9 p.m. or later, and where junior associates faced subtle pressure to seek out “face time”—hanging around the office at all hours in hopes a partner would notice their budding enthusiasm and commitment.
“My experience has been very positive. I have a 7-month-old, and being at home at this time has created a lot of additional benefits, including that I can be around for him,” says Hugh Sandler about working from home. Courtesy Hugh Sandler
In the past decade, even as employers in fields like tech and media gave workers more latitude to work remotely at least part of the time, law firms have stayed rooted in the old ways.
“Among senior attorneys, there is a belief that being in the office is more valuable,” notes Sandler.
Why this is the case isn’t precisely clear. It may reflect the fact that many Big Law offices are physical monuments to power and prestige—many have sweeping views and imposing boardrooms—and that law firm partners like the sense of empire a packed office provides. Or it may be the conservative nature of the legal profession.
According to Sang Lee, a former attorney who advises law firms, there is a powerful strain of conformity in Big Law that has made managers reluctant to embrace new trends—including ones related to technology and “agile workplaces”—unless others are doing the same. But as pandemic shutdowns, which most lawyers had expected would last a matter of weeks, drag on indefinitely, many long-held assumptions are now being overturned.
This includes attitudes toward working from home. Senior partners are discovering that tools like Zoom function remarkably well, and are even superior to the boardroom conference calls that are a fixture of Big Law life. And paradoxically, law firms are finding remote work during the pandemic has increased a sense of community, according to Lee.
“The traditional practice of Big Law can feel isolating. Because everyone is working from home and having this communal experience, technology has allowed lawyers to lean into their own humanity,” she says.
Tyler Grant, a securities lawyer at Winston & Strawn, discovered a similar phenomenon after he began working from his home in Jersey City rather than the Met Life building in midtown Manhattan. He says many of his colleagues now enjoy spending more time with their children, and attending family dinners that haven’t been part of their routines for years, if ever.
For Grant, who is single, he says the lack of a commute has afforded him more flexibility—letting him put in an additional hour of work most days, while also giving him more time for personal activities.
Not everything about practicing law during the pandemic is rosy, of course. While some practice areas are thriving—most notably bankruptcy and insurance law—the economic toll of the outbreak has led work to dry up for many lawyers, and firms big and small are implementing layoffs and austerity measures.
And Grant says that, while he appreciates the newfound flexibility of working from home, he worries junior lawyers are missing out on opportunities for mentorship that come with being in the office.
“Being able to pop in is such a useful tool,” he says, describing a culture in law firms and elsewhere that lets younger employees receive informal, in-person guidance. Grant adds that trying to network with clients or other lawyers via email can be “awkward.”
Sandler, meanwhile, says the pandemic has led the legal profession to take a giant leap forward in terms of technology, but worries that there are limits to what tech can achieve. As a litigator, he wonders how the court system will address trials by jury—a right enshrined by the Constitution—in the age of Zoom. Sandler also frets for the economic ecosystem that has built up around law firms, pointing to the numerous restaurants and small shops near Grand Central Terminal that rely heavily on lawyers for their business.
More broadly, lawyers are like many other professionals who are trying to cope with radical changes to their job brought about by the pandemic. Lee, though, says attorneys are particularly open to acquiring new skills and knowledge, and that this trait will serve them well amid the turmoil.
“This a community of lifelong learners,” she says.
And, at least for now, they can be home for dinner.


fortune--2020-05-30--London’s Savile Row exported bespoke British suits to the 1%. Can it survive in a socially distanced

London’s Savile Row exported bespoke British suits to the 1%. Can it survive in a socially distanced world?

Trump threatens to use ‘ unlimited power ’ of the military to crack down on George Floyd protestors

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When London went into lockdown in mid-March, the city’s famed Savile Row had a problem: you can’t make a bespoke suit over Zoom.
The street in upscale West London, known for nearly two centuries as the heart of British tailoring, is home to dozens of suit makers all tasked with creating a seamless fit and style for the world’s 1%, from executives to movie stars.
But its old-school methods, which rely on in-person measurements, multiple fittings, and the painstaking, time consuming, and expert work of specialist tailors, may be threatened not just by nationwide lockdowns—but by social distancing as a whole.
“If you say socially distancing to make a suit, the two don’t mix,” says William Skinner, managing director of Dege & Skinner. “It’s like oil and water.”
Then there’s the issue of travel: while Savile Row is a major destination for the well-dressed, drawing clients from around the world, it’s also a British export in its own right—with tailors now spending much of their time on the road, fitting suits from San Francisco to Beijing.
That poses a serious question for the street’s post-lockdown future. In a post-pandemic world, how much will people be able to travel—and will they want to be touched and measured when they get there? And if not, how can the bespoke business ever be the same?
A ‘hands-on’ affair
“I think it’s on most people’s bucket list to have a custom suit made once in their lives,” says Kathryn Sargent, the founder of her eponymous brand, and the first female master tailor on Savile Row.
If a custom suit is a “bucket list” item, a Savile Row specimen is top of the range. A bespoke two-piece suit—the bread and butter of most tailors on the Row—starts between GBP 5,000 to 6,000 ($6,200-$7,431), takes at least three in-person fittings, and at least 10 to 12 weeks of hands-on work.
While some tailors offer more affordable options through made-to-measure, or even closely tailored off-the-rack classics, bespoke is still the vast majority of the business, according to multiple tailors Fortune spoke to. It’s also still largely a menswear business. Sargent, who has an unusually large female client base, says only about a third of her work is women’s wear, though the demand for tailored suits for women is growing rapidly.
Though the reputation of Savile Row has long rested on a classically British perspective on formal wear—pinstripes for the city, tweeds for the country—the business is also now fundamentally an international one.
Campbell Carey, creative director and head cutter at Huntsman, in the brand’s workshop. Courtesy of Huntsman
Huntsman—the shop that reportedly inspired the premise for the Kingsman movies—says 40% of its business is in the U.K., but even that heavily relies on an international client base, who stop by the London shop on business trips or come specifically to see their tailor. Another 40% of the business is based in the U.S., including out of the brand’s New York outpost. Tailors also make multiple trips a year to the U.S. and Asia, says Campbell Carey, the brand’s creative director and head cutter.
Even Norton & Sons, which has 80% of its business in the U.K., is often on the road, says managing director Martin Nicholls—tailors travel at least four times a year to the U.S., as well as Japan, to see clients.
That presents problems of both fit, and logistics. Travel bans and quarantine measures pose an incredible challenge to the Row’s business model—both clients coming in, and tailors going out—while an inability to measure, touch, and adjust a suit to a level of perfection presents a more existential threat to what a bespoke suit offers.
“Obviously, what we do is a hands-on affair,” says Carey. “We have to be close to the customer.”
Shop closures and hospital scrubs
As the U.K. went into nationwide lockdown on March 24, Savile Row had already closed up shop, after watching business go from a strong start to the year to a trickle in a matter of weeks.
“The second of March, it was almost like the tap was turned off,” says Nicholls. “I very naïvely expected to be back in a couple weeks’ time.”
The shopfront of the Norton & Sons location on Savile Row, London. The shop had to close in March as the U.K. went into a nationwide lockdown. Courtesy of Norton & Sons
In the weeks afterwards, the staff of Norton & Sons was effectively furloughed—the U.K. government has run a vast scheme to pay wages while the country is under lockdown—and the tailors went to work from home. The work was mostly wrapping up anything that was possible under lockdown: putting the finishing touches on a suit, say, or filling orders for long-time customers whose measurements were already on file.
Other tailors described the same constraints, and a focus on preventing layoffs: bespoke tailors are expert artisans, and hiring one requires committing to years of on-the-job training and investment. Consultations were moved to Zoom, and some tailors described going to creative lengths to keep up contact with clients, including having them send photos and videos of themselves wearing the suits. To keep busy, some turned their efforts’ to making high-end face masks, and hospital scrubs for the U.K.’s National Health Service. In the process, the scrubs received precise design adjustments to improve their durability and fit, what Carey of Huntsman calls “the Savile Row nuances.”
Others were determined not to let sartorial standards totally collapse over months of working from home. While Sargent admitted she was wearing more casual wear, and that the brand had received more interest in “top-half clothes”, others were determined to stay fully suited under lockdown.
William Skinner, managing director of Dege & Skinner, prepares to wash his windows in a three-piece bespoke suit while under lockdown. Credit: Henry Skinner.
Skinner said he was still wearing the full gear—especially for photo shoots, where his son photographed him watering the plants and washing the windows for an Instagram challenge full of people doing regular tasks in bespoke, high-end menswear. He’s trying to keep perspective. After all, he says, in World War II, his grandfather showed up to work one day to find the shop had been destroyed in the Blitz.
Meanwhile, Nicholls, at home in rural Somerset, wistfully noted he missed wearing suits to work every day, and said his clients tell him they do, too.
At the moment, he said, “there’s no one to impress but the cat.”
Face masks and virtual fittings
As the U.K.’s lockdown begins to ease—with non-essential shops permitted to open on June 15—Savile Row’s tailors have spent months anticipating what the future of the business will look like.
The lockdown and ensuing economic crisis has brought a fundamental struggle for survival to many businesses on the Row—but even a profitable “new normal” will require immediate operational changes, all say. Every tailor interviewed for this piece said they were putting in a range of basic changes: anyone who could would continue to work from home (your suit may well be constructed in a back garden workshop in suburban Kent), while clients would be seen by appointment only. Sanitizer use will be excessive, and face masks will be custom made—in exclusive, high-end fabrics, to take with you when you go home.
While some say elements of a fitting may well have to be offered virtually, others are wondering whether that’s a shift clients would even want.
“If anything, [clients] want things done almost more the way they used to be done, rather than less,” says Nicholls. “I think for them, they might feel a bit cheated if we pulled back on that.”
Part of the joy—and the cost—of getting a bespoke suit made is that in-person, hands-on experience, many said. You’re not paying for just the craftwork and the quality, but the individual attention to your own body and your own preferences.
Whether styles will change is another matter. While some acknowledged they had made “softer”, more casual styles under lockdown, all said lockdowns won’t take away the appeal of dressing up—it should only heighten it.
“As we go further down the line, I think people will be glad to get to a piece of normality, and be able to wear beautiful clothes,” said Skinner.
Kathryn Sargent, the founder of her eponymous bespoke tailoring brand, in her showroom in London’s Savile Row. Courtesy of Kathryn Sargent.
In the meantime, most were pining to get back to the workshop—even if it means accepting that the nature of the business is permanently changed.
“I love it, I really miss it,” said Sargent. “But who would have thought we would be challenged in this way? I’m sitting here and thinking: maybe there’s a way to do things differently.”
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fortune--2020-05-30--Developers face challenges building in Vancouver

Greater Vancouver is one of North America’s toughest housing markets, with expensive real estate and a significant shortage of affordable rental units. Even though local governments acknowledge the problem, the property developers who want to build multiple-unit housing often face pushback from municipal councils and local activists.
The North Shore of Vancouver is home to three suburban municipalities: West Vancouver, with its 10,000-square-foot monster mansions, and the two North Vancouvers: the densified City of North Vancouver, nestled against the waterfront, and the largely single-family suburban District of North Vancouver which surrounds it.
The current North Vancouver District council was elected in 2018, and since then every proposal for multifamily housing, including rental, has been defeated, postponed, or rejected. Local developers are making hard decisions to keep their businesses moving forward at a time when the municipality is blocking every housing development that comes before them.
Anne McMullin, president and CEO of the Urban Development Institute, an organization that represents residential, commercial, and industrial developers in British Columbia, has seen developers shifting their focus to cities that seem more amenable to development. The organization’s members create roughly 230,000 jobs and contribute $22 billion annually to the British Columbia GDP.
McMullin is worried about the longer-term impact of barriers to development, especially with the economic slowdowns related to the coronavirus pandemic. “We’re in a very different situation right now with the crisis that we’re in. [Our sector] had already slowed in the last 18 months, so how do we recover? And if we had a huge pullback in the last 18 months, and a lot of the money left British Columbia, how do you bring it back? The fear is that once the money’s left, it may take a couple of years to get it back, because the money’s been spent.”
North Vancouver District is home to Oliver Webbe, president of the Darwin Group. Webbe grew up employed in his family’s construction business, working on job sites from age 15, then as a construction estimator. Ten years ago he created a new development division within Darwin.
“We decided to just focus on one market—the North Shore,” Webbe says. “We decided to stick to our own backyard, where I’ve lived pretty much my whole life. And the only place we’ll buy real estate is the North Shore. For now.”
That local focus became a handicap when the district elected its current council in 2018. A majority of the new council members were strongly opposed to development and quickly made their feelings known. “After the election it was apparent that the electorate had no appetite for multiunit housing, except for affordable and social housing,” current two-term council member Jim Hanson says. But there doesn’t seem to be an appetite for supporting below-market housing, either: In the months that followed their election, council members voted down or blocked not only every commercial proposal but also halted nonprofit projects while waiting to redefine what “affordable” meant.
Developers like the Darwin Group have found themselves with large, complex projects that are unlikely to move ahead.
One stalled project is the North Shore Innovation District, which proposed “office, light industrial, employment-supportive housing, educational and recreational facilities, retail, [and] community amenities” as well as 1,100 new rental homes over a 45-acre site. Hanson explains that this project was rejected because of “traffic, environmental degradation in the form of forest devastation, and a general sense by residents of Seymour that the project was out of step with their vision of their local community.”
A second project would build 350 units of rental housing for the students and staff of nearby Capilano University, and a third, Maplewood Gardens, would include 58 new below-market rentals for tenants already living on the property.
Rental housing is in especially short supply in the area, and a 2012 Coriolis Consulting report described the majority of older wood-frame rental stock as “being at risk of redevelopment.” In the past this has led to “renovictions” of low-income tenants to allow for the demolition and replacement of affordable rental housing with new, more expensive units.
Webbe says his project wants to avoid that. “This project will replace 58 aging existing rental units with new below-market rental units that are going to be developed in partnership with BC Housing. We’re phasing it so that nobody will have to move out or be displaced during the construction.”
For now, Webbe is adopting a wait-and-see approach. “In all honesty, it hasn’t changed our direction or what our vision is for our projects,” he says. “We’re staying the course. The reality is when you’ve got a considerably new council, it’s going to take a bit of time for them to get up to speed with policies that had already been in place for 10 years before they were elected.”
The construction side of Darwin’s business can carry them through the development drought, he says. “From a business perspective, the construction business allows us to be patient and allows us to hold land for a very long time, if we have to.”
But where a commercial developer like Darwin can wait out the council, the nonprofit Catalyst Community Developments Society faced a larger challenge when the new council stopped a project that was initiated by the previous council. A new nonprofit facility would have built 80 units of below-market rental housing and a seniors’ respite facility on land leased from the district.
“We had about a year and a half of our time invested, and we’d invested several hundred thousand dollars,” Catalyst vice president Robert Brown says. “The society had to absorb that, and the people who fund us had to absorb that. The cancellation caused a major financial problem for our organization, and it took pretty much the whole of 2019 to deal with it.”
Brown understands the realities of municipal zoning and is frustrated that despite working closely with the district in developing the project, it was turned down: “Even though the policies hadn’t changed, the council had. That’s the biggest problem that any developer has, where council doesn’t seem to consistently support policy that’s already in place.”
Brown is unhappy with how Catalyst has been treated: “As a nonprofit, we’re designed to break even. If we run into a situation where things change dramatically, it’s more difficult for us to absorb that than it is for a market developer who’s made significant profits.
“The strangest thing about this is that we went through that process, it got turned down, and we have never received a single phone call or correspondence from anybody at the district to say, ‘Would you like to discuss this? Would you like to revamp the proposal?’” he notes.
In an email, district Mayor Mike Little says: “I always found it strange to have a community service agency as the applicant for a rezoning on public land. The agency wanted to talk about the amazing things they do in the community and could do with the space, but the neighbors have very real concerns about access, egress, heights, massing, and other neighborly impacts. That process always put the neighborhood at odds with what may be a very worthy community service.”
Catalyst has stopped attempting to develop projects in the district and has instead focused on projects in other areas, including the City of North Vancouver.
The Urban Development Institute’s McMullin agrees that many developers are choosing to invest away from the Vancouver region. “Our members build all over North America,” she says. “Many of them have retreated over the last couple of years, both because of the difficulties in some municipalities, but also because of the demand-side measures that the province brought in.” In 2016, in response to what was seen as an out-of-control real estate market, British Columbia implemented a new foreign-buyers tax that imposed an additional property transfer tax of 20% on all residential property purchases by non-Canadian buyers.
“I would honestly say that our builders are some of the most sophisticated in North America, if not the world,” she says. “Cressey Development Group built a lot of those rental units in Seattle. Bosa Development has, essentially, been responsible for redeveloping San Diego. Onni Group is in Los Angeles, Intracorp Projects is in Austin, Texas. We’re in Atlanta, Phoenix, and all over. So, you know, money moves.”
McMullin says they’ve been meeting with other municipal councils, and she’s hopeful. She wants to get the “approval process down to six months or a year rather than five years…Because if we come out of the pandemic, and there’s been nothing over the last 18 months, will we have to wait another five years?”
Little defends the council’s actions. “It has been affirmed by the courts that new councils are not legally encumbered by the decisions of previous councils,” he says.
“We’re talking about situations where developers are asking for the public to give them permission to change the zoning of the property,” Little says. “There’s cost and waste anytime you make a change of direction, and though I have no interest in creating waste for another party in the process, they’re going to be the benefactor of the uplift in that property. So it’s not unreasonable to assume that they’re going to be the ones that hold the risk.”
Both Catalyst and Darwin raise concerns about how the council is balancing the needs of the broader community with the NIMBY objections of the local neighborhoods. Mayor Little is clear where he stands: “We want neighborhoods to have a community character and identity. And you don’t get that by forcing something into a neighborhood that doesn’t fit.”
Even though recent court decisions in neighboring White Rock and New Westminster have established that a council is entitled to back out of rezoning applications, another challenge to municipal approval practices is coming before the British Columbia Supreme Court. In August 2019, Vancouver’s Beedie Development Group filed a lawsuit against the City of Vancouver asking the court to overturn the rejection of an application to develop property in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown. The suit alleges that Vancouver’s Development Permit Board overstepped its authority when it rejected a scaled-down nine-story development that fit the existing zoning.
The Chinatown property faced intense community and political opposition, but in 2017, a smaller version of the project had been recommended for approval by all the relevant City of Vancouver groups: city staff, the Urban Design Panel, and the Development Permit Advisory Panel. Since Beedie had ensured “compliance with all applicable bylaws, policies, and guidelines” it was expected that the project would be approved by the Development Permit Board.
The Development Permit Board rejected the application, an action that Beedie’s court filing states “exceeded its legal authority and breached its duties.” If Beedie is successful, the court will rule that municipalities like North Vancouver District can’t necessarily refuse a development permit for a project that checks all the boxes.
If that happens, Darwin, Catalyst, and other developers may once again feel welcome to build in the District of North Vancouver.


fortune--2020-05-30--These stocks may benefit from the resurgence of the Great American Road Trip

Would you load up an RV and hit the road to avoid flying for a summer trip?
If the answer is yes, you’re in good company. As the coronavirus crisis has battered the travel and hotel industries, many would-be summer vacationers are uneasy about flying, which means plenty of Americans will likely be hitting the road.
In fact, according to a survey conducted in early May by MMGY Global for the U.S. Travel Association, only 18% of travelers feel safe taking a domestic flight, while the same percentage feel safe at a hotel or resort. Meanwhile, the majority (some 68%) feel safest traveling by personal car, and roughly a third of travelers feel safest in parks.
Cue the RV. According to new reports, RV dealers are already seeing a big uptick in demand for the social-distance-friendly vehicles. In fact, “early feedback is there seems to be a lot of incremental demand for RVs, whether to own them or to rent them, because it allows you to vacation without being too close to your peers,” says Jefferies’ Bret Jordan.
And given the environment, that’s not too much of a surprise.
“I can certainly see where there’s a short term recovery and a rush to buy RVs for the incremental consumer who wants to take a vacation without social contact. I’m hearing from lots of people who are saying, ‘Gee, we never considered ourselves as RV-ers, but we’re considering getting one,’” Jordan, who covers companies like Camping World Holdings, tells Fortune.
In fact, 41% of campers say they still plan on taking their planned camping trips, while only 13% say they’re postponing (not canceling) them, according to a recent survey by Kampgrounds of America. Plus, with gas historically cheap, the RV space has more than one tailwind to carry it this summer.
That’s giving RV stocks like Camping World Holdings, Winnebago Industries, and Thor Industries a massive boost in recent weeks. All three stocks have rebounded over 100%—Camping World is up over 400%—from market-wide lows in mid March, and some analysts see cause for optimism in early signs of recovery in retail sales and demand.
Camping World announced in May for its first-quarter earnings that despite slowed demand in April and March, the company saw record demand in recent weeks: The first weekend in May was the company’s best ever, management said. Jefferies analysts wrote that the desire of consumers to “social distance” might be driving that “spike in demand.”
It seems some investors, at least, are betting on (and participating in) these trends, as one noted on Twitter. And analysts like Jefferies’s Jordan see the appeal: “The concept of it is, from an investor standpoint, ‘Hey, this is a great play on the pandemic.’”
I’ve been taking in many of the great sites in the PNW by RV this week, and it has been amazing. I think many other people will be traveling by RV this coming year… so I bought these stocks: $THO (Airstream, Keystone), $WGO (Winnebago), and $CWH (Camping World) pic.twitter.com/niPZncuxhh — Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) May 26, 2020
The possible summer surge comes off a few years of sales softening in the RV space, down from a 2017 peak of just over 500,000 sold.
Still, it’s not only your luggage that RVs are carrying in 2020. Some RV companies like Camping World are heavily leveraged, with around $1 billion in debt, Jordan points out. Some investors previously feared many of these leveraged RV companies wouldn’t survive a downturn and might go bankrupt in the early months of the crisis, a pattern that would be historically consistent.
But demand seemingly hasn’t dropped off a cliff, and many of the big names have rebounded in the markets: “I think there’s a lot of relief in the rally in the sense that it seems as if we’re not going to see a collapse in RV demand,” Jordan points out.
Yet while demand may be on the rise, some early surveys suggest the impact to outdoor activity this summer may be relatively flat. A late-April through early-May survey conducted by online outdoor retailer Moosejaw and Walmart found that sentiment around car camping was pretty split, with 30% saying they plan to do more versus 32% saying they’re planning less.
And some analysts note the patterns from previous recessions are still a possibility for RVs. In the 2008 to 2009 crisis, the industry was cut in half from a volume standpoint, notes Jordan—although clearly the atmosphere is right for socially distanced vacations this time around.
Even with the dramatic stock rebounds in recent weeks, some analysts are skeptical the trend will last, as consumer discretionary spending is bound to take a hit amid (or coming out of) a recession like this. But Jordan notes: “Maybe because this [recession] is different…this will leave the RV space untouched.”
More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:
—Saving lives vs. saving the economy is a false tradeoff, economists say
—Real unemployment rate soars past 24.9%—and the U.S. has now lost 33.5 million jobs
—17% of unemployed workers aren’t looking for work—and that’s warping the official unemployment rate
—Does Apple’s stock buyback strategy make sense in this market?
—Goldman Sachs doubts there will be a Round 3 of PPP loans for small businesses
—Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs
—WATCH: Why banks were ready for the financial impact of the coronavirus
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fortune--2020-05-31--IPOs may be a rarity in 2020—but the world’s oldest exchange is still a hot place to list

For two years in a row, Europe’s largest stock-market listings have taken place in Amsterdam, which has beguiled companies with a deep pool of international investors and corporate governance norms that tilt in favor of management teams.
JDE Peet’s BV, the coffee business listed Friday by the Reimann family’s JAB Holding Co., became the latest addition to Euronext Amsterdam’s roster of mega initial public offerings, going public with a market value of almost 16 billion euros ($18 billion).
The coffee giant’s float comes eight months after South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. listed its Prosus NV internet unit on the world’s oldest stock exchange with a market value that well exceeded $100 billion. Europe’s hottest deal of 2018 was payments company Adyen NV’s $1.1 billion IPO in the Dutch capital. It is the Amsterdam Exchange Index’s best performer this year, up 58% compared with a 12% decline for the Dutch benchmark.
On Friday, May, 29, the coffee giant JDE Peet’s went public, listing on the Euronext Amsterdam. Photo courtesy of Euronext Amsterdam. Courtesy of Euronext Amsterdam
“Amsterdam has a deep and broad investor base that’s very international in share,” said Rients Abma, executive director at Eumedion, a Dutch corporate governance forum for institutional investors. On average, 85% to 90% of blue-chip Dutch stocks are owned by non-Dutch institutions, according to Abma.
Euronext Amsterdam is home to consumer-goods company Unilever, oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc and semiconductor-equipment giant ASML Holding NV.
Governance Model
More flexible corporate governance standards make the Netherlands an attractive listing destination, he said.
The Dutch corporate governance model gives management several legal options to gain more control over a company at the expense of investor power, said Corne van Zeijl, buy-side analyst at investment company Actiam. “A listing in the Netherlands doesn’t imply giving away power to shareholders.”
The option to establish a “Stichting” — a legal entity that shrouds the company and is essentially a takeover defense in the face of a hostile bid or shareholder activism — also makes Amsterdam an attractive home for firms, Abma said.
Generic-drug maker Mylan NV, which is run from Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, but incorporated in the Netherlands, used the defense in fighting an unsolicited offer from Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. in 2015.
The Netherlands is a popular place for international and regional head offices. Companies including Italian luxury carmaker Ferrari NV and French telecommunications operator Altice Europe NV are registered in the country.
“Definitely not all companies registered in the Netherlands also list here, but some do as it seems a bit more logical,” said Van Zeijl.
JDE Peet’s has deeper ties to Netherlands than just a registration. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam and the country generated 10% of its revenue last year. Most of all, the JDE in its name stands for Jacobs Douwe Egberts, borne out of a 2014 merger of Mondelez International Inc.’s caffeine business and Dutch coffee stalwart Douwe Egberts, first established in 1753.
Moreover, the brand listed in Amsterdam with great fanfare in 2012, under the name D.E Master Blenders 1753 NV. Just over a year later, it was taken private again by JAB after findings of accounting irregularities at a subsidiary in Brazil led to a 56% decline in profit.


fortune--2020-05-31--Parents hoping to get back to work face a child care crisis

U.S. food prices see historic jump and are likely to stay high

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A single father in New Jersey is taking unpaid leave from his job as a baker because he has no one to look after his son. A university employee in New York realizes she may never return to the office after her autistic daughter’s child care center closed for good. A new mother in Utah uses vacation time to take two hours off from work each day.
The coronavirus pandemic has created a staggering child care crisis that threatens to undermine the reopening of the U.S. economy. More than one-third of families report that someone has stayed home from work to mind their children because of the outbreak, according to a nationwide survey by the Urban Institute, an economic policy research group.
Public schools in most states are closed for the remainder of the academic year. Many camps will not open this summer. Thousands of day cares are also closed, many of them following the lead of school districts, while some remain open only for children of essential workers. And the informal network of relatives and friends that many parents rely on has disintegrated in a world of social distancing.
Dan Cappilla saw other no choice but to take unpaid leave from his job as an overnight baker at a ShopRite in Manahawkin, New Jersey.
Before the pandemic his parents took turns spending the night looking after his 7-year-old son, Gavin. But he fears exposing them to the virus, especially since they live with his 90-year-old grandmother.
His manager offered him daytime hours, but with schools closed that didn’t help. Cappilla needs to be home during the day to guide his son through remote lessons. Unable to pay next month’s rent, Cappilla is holding out for summer, when schooling won’t be an issue and he hopes the virus will have ebbed enough for his parents to come back.
“My hands are tied,” Cappilla said. “I have no solid plan.”
The uncertainty will endure for months. School officials from New York to Chicago have said remote learning may continue into at least part of the next academic year.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children, an organization of early learning professionals, estimates that half the country’s child care providers are closed. A study by NAEYC and the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, projected that 4.5 million child care slots risk disappearing without significant aid.
KinderCare, the largest private child care provider in the country with nearly 1,600 locations, said it lost 90% of its business when lockdown and social distancing rules took hold.
The Portland, Oregon-based company initially closed all but 450 of its centers, which were left open to serve essential workers’ kids. It hopes to reopen most by June.
“We’ll be in this heightened, sensitive world at least until we get a vaccine,” CEO Tom Wyatt said. “We have to get used to that.”
Congressional Democrats are introducing legislation to provide $50 billion to help child care providers offset the costs of opening safely, including procuring protective equipment and possibly enrolling fewer children to meet health guidelines. Prospects for passage are unclear, but two Republican senators, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, have called for the next pandemic relief package to include $25 billion for the child care industry.
Congress already allocated $3.5 billion for the child care industry under a pandemic relief bill passed in March, but the aid has been slow to reach providers. Many also have struggled to qualify for loans under a separate payroll protection program.
Laurie Fletcher, who runs a day care out of her Michigan home, has seen her income plummet since the state ordered day cares closed except for essential workers’ children. But she was unable receive payroll protection because she lacked a business account and ended up laying off her full-time assistant.
“We are basically paying to stay open for the essential workers,” Fletcher said.
More than 330,000 child care workers have lost their jobs since March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“People are going to find that if there is no child care system to return to, they aren’t going to be able to go back to work,” said Catherine White, director of child care and early learning at the National Women’s Law Center, which supported a coalition of more than 500 child care providers and advocates in calling for the $50 billion relief bill.
“Women especially are going to pay the price,” White added, noting that even before the pandemic, mothers were more likely than fathers to leave the workforce over child care difficulties. “Women are over half the workforce. What does that mean for our economy if women can’t go back to work?”
Samantha Shlimbaum, a program manager at Pace University in New York, is counting on her employer’s flexibility. She was heartbroken to learn that her 3-year-old daughter’s after-school center closed down. It was one of of the few that would accept Nina, who is autistic and attends a special-needs preschool.
With the preschool also closed, Shlimbaum is now working from home while caring for her daughter, who requires speech therapy. Her husband helps, but he eventually will return to work as a real estate agent.
“I can’t sit in front of a spreadsheet and ensure it is 100% accurate. I get distracted with my kid in the background,” Shlimbaum said. “We might go and stay with family for a while, but beyond that, it will be the way it is.”
A rare and serious inflammatory condition in children that’s linked to the coronavirus is also exacerbating child care problems.
The syndrome influenced New York City Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision not to reopen summer school classrooms and has parents agonizing over whether to it’s safe to send children to day care.
Sara Adelman, a marketing manager working from home in Salt Lake City, is burning through paid vacation time to take the last two hours off each workday to look after her 7-month-old daughter. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to put her back in day care, which reopens Monday.
“There’s a lot of different expectations,” Adelman said. “It’s hard to know what the correct answer is.”


fortune--2020-05-31--Congress eyes extending $600 unemployment bonus as deadline nears

A debate in Congress over whether to extend $600 a week in federally provided benefits to the unemployed looks sure to intensify with the number of people receiving the aid now topping 30 million — one in five workers.
The money, included in a government relief package enacted in March, is set to expire July 31. Yet with the unemployment rate widely expected to still be in the mid-teens by then, members of both parties will face pressure to compromise on some form of renewed benefits for the jobless.
Democrats have proposed keeping the $600-a-week payments through January in a $3 trillion relief package that the House approved this month along party lines. Senate Republicans oppose that measure. They have expressed concern that the federal payments — which come on top of whatever unemployment aid a state provides — would discourage laid-off people from returning to jobs that pay less than their combined state and federal unemployment aid now does.
So far there are no formal negotiations on another relief package. But analysts say the need to address the fate of the $600 weekly benefits could force a resolution of the issue this summer.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, are promoting a plan that would provide $450 a week for laid-off workers who return to their jobs, as a “back to work” bonus. This payment would also expire by July 31, though.
Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, said earlier this week that the proposal is “something we’re looking at very carefully.”
Separately, Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee, has proposed reducing the $600 benefit to $300 in stages by the end of the year. This plan, Beyer suggested in an interview, would sharply reduce the number of people who are receiving more money from jobless aid than they would from working.
“If you solve that problem, there’s a good chance of extending unemployment,” Beyer said.
Typically, state unemployment aid replaces only about one-third to one-half a laid-off worker’s pay to encourage the recipients to seek new work. The $600 in federal benefits was added as a way to replace all of an average worker’s lost income. But because those who have lost jobs since the virus hit are disproportionately low-wage workers, most of them are receiving more in unemployment aid than they did from their old jobs, economists estimate.
Shannon Conway, director of operations at R&L Hospitality Group in Richmond, which owns five restaurants and a catering company, said she and other restaurant operators have encountered reluctance from some of their laid-off workers to return.
That’s partly because of the $600-a-week in federal unemployment aid, she said. But another factor is the uncertainty about what the restaurant business will look like in the coming weeks and months, Conway added. It’s unlikely that servers will earn anything close to what they used to, she said.
“Recalling staff is definitely an issue,” Conway said. “Why would they give up a sure thing when they know we don’t know what’s going to happen through these early stages of reopening? I can’t guarantee them their same shifts.”
Madelyn Figgers, 26, lost her job as a server in March at one of the restaurants Conway operates, Lunch and Supper. Figgers said the extra $600 in unemployment benefits has allowed her to keep up with all her bills and rent.
“I don’t think I would be able to stay afloat without the $600,” she said.
Figgers acknowledged that the extra money would make her hesitant to return to her old job, particularly if it was for fewer hours than she had before. But she also knows that legally she is required to accept an offer for work, or risk losing all her benefits.
So far, Figgers hasn’t been asked to return. But she doubts that the restaurant industry will return to what it was, when she could earn $300 in tips on a busy weekend night. She is considering leaving the industry and is looking for administrative jobs that she could do from home.
Research by University of Chicago economist Peter Ganong and two of his colleagues has found that, because of the extra $600, two-thirds of laid-off workers are receiving benefits that exceed the paychecks they previously earned from working. One-fifth could receive at least twice their previous pay.
Ganong says that such large payments could delay some laid-off workers from switching to new careers that might be more in demand in the future.
But he also thinks that Congress should keep an enhanced benefit in place because more jobless aid is crucial in the midst of a deep recession. Jobless benefits enable recipients to pay for necessities and cover more bills, including, crucially, their rent or a mortgage, Ganong said.
He proposes replacing the flat $600-a-week payments with a percentage increase to each recipient’s benefit check, with the goal of matching the worker’s previous earnings but not going much higher. Congress did not initially take this route, in part because of doubts that states’ antiquated unemployment systems could handle such a change, but that could be addressed by the end of July, Ganong said.
Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation, said that unemployment benefit payments are on track to top $70 billion in May, a significant stimulus for the economy.
“The job market has not made a big comeback, and the enhanced unemployment aid is one of the most important fiscal boosts that the federal government can provide to families and the economy,” he said.


fortune--2020-05-31--U.S. food prices see historic jump and are likely to stay high

Sea-Doo maker faces a coronavirus conundrum : Demand is high , but supply is not

As if trips to the grocery store weren’t nerve-wracking enough, U.S. shoppers lately have seen the costs of meat, eggs and even potatoes soar as the coronavirus has disrupted processing plants and distribution networks.
Overall, the cost of food bought to eat at home skyrocketed by the most in 46 years, and analysts caution that meat prices in particular could remain high as slaughterhouses struggle to maintain production levels while implementing procedures intended to keep workers healthy.
While price spikes for staples such as eggs and flour have eased as consumer demand has leveled off, prices remain volatile for carrots, potatoes and other produce because of transportation issues and the health of workers who pick crops and work in processing plants.
In short, supermarket customers and restaurant owners shouldn’t expect prices to drop anytime soon.
“Our biggest concern is long-term food costs. I believe they will continue to go up,” said Julie Kalambokidis, co-owner of Adriano’s Brick Oven, a restaurant in Glenwood, Iowa.
Tamra Kennedy, who owns nine Mexican-inspired fast food franchises in Iowa and Minnesota, joined Kalambokidis on a call set up by Iowa U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne and said sometimes even getting essential ingredients is difficult.
“You can pick an ingredient and I can tell you there are shortages,” she said.
Big fluctuations in food prices began in March, when the coronavirus pandemic began to sink in for U.S. consumers.
The Labor Department reports that the 2.6% jump in April food prices was the largest monthly increase in 46 years. Prices for meats, poultry, fish and eggs increased the most, rising 4.3%. Although the 2.9% jump in cereals and bakery products wasn’t as steep, it was still the largest increase the agency has recorded.
Dairy and related products, and fruits and vegetables increased by 1.5 percent in April.
Egg prices also reached an all-time record of more than $3 a dozen in late March, but they have since fallen to less than $1 a dozen.
The situation has been worse for meat prices, largely because of illnesses among slaughterhouse workers. The outbreaks struck pork processing plants the hardest, but beef and chicken processors also saw some impact as thousands of workers tested positive for the virus and the United Food and Commercial Workers union said at least 44 workers had died of COVID-19 as of Friday.
April retail prices for boneless pork chops and ham were nearly 6% higher than in March and retail prices for hamburger and sirloin steak were about 4% higher, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported. The price of whole fresh chickens rose by more than 12%.
After numerous closures, most pork plants have reopened but often not at full capacity, forcing pig farmers to euthanize animals that couldn’t be processed.
“There are biological constraints to this and that’s why I would anticipate prices to stay high at least for some period of time,” said Trey Malone, an agriculture economist and professor at Michigan State University. “If you’re going to euthanize thousands of animals and it takes six months to raise a new one, obviously there’s going to be some type of delay or buffer in the supply chain.”
By mid-May, beef and pork slaughterhouses were operating at about 60% capacity, though that figure has since climbed to nearly 90%, said Jayson Lusk, an economist at Purdue University. Although Lusk was optimistic that the worst of the meat supply crunch is over, he said it’s always possible that a second wave of illness could cause the situation to worsen.
Some grocery price jumps were because of people stocking up when the coronavirus first arrived. But even as some prices have dropped, the cost of produce such as potatoes, onions and carrots has remained above last year’s prices.
Much of the increase appears to be because more people are cooking at home.
For garlic, most of which is imported from China, a 278% price increase from a year ago is largely due to a sluggish supply chain in China.
Jeff Dunn, CEO of Bolthouse Farms, a major provider of carrots and distributor of salad dressings and fruit and vegetable-based beverages, said he doesn’t anticipate new supply problems. But he noted that some of his company’s workers in distribution and field work have become sick, and that there is an additional cost to implement and maintain procedures intended to keep workers safe.
Someone has to pick up those costs, he said.
“There is real cost being built across every supply chain. Not just with us but with the retailer in terms of incremental cost associated with COVID,” Dunn said. “At some point, if you want any chance to hold up any kind of margin, those costs are going to have to be passed on or somehow recognized by the government with some help.”
Given that the percentage of Americans’ paychecks that go toward food has declined over the past 50 years, many people likely can handle the recent price increases. But the coronavirus also has pushed roughly 41 million Americans out of work, and for them, even a small price hike can be troubling.
“We’ve obviously seen this record increase in unemployment filings, and so there are more people who are at risk in that sense that they literally don’t have any employment to secure the money that they would need to buy the food that they traditionally purchase,” Malone said. “For the people who are already operating on the margins, these price increases are nontrivial.”
It’s also a tough time for livestock farmers, who had hoped that after some down years, they would benefit from new trade deals and a strong domestic economy.
“Farmers thought they saw the light at the end of tunnel,” Lusk said. “It turns out that it was the headlight of a train.”


fortune--2020-05-31--Sea-Doo maker faces a coronavirus conundrum: Demand is high, but supply is not

Sea-Doo maker BRP Inc. halted production at factories from Australia to Mexico during the coronavirus lockdown. Now it’s rushing to crank them back up, to capture rising demand for all-terrain vehicles and other toys for the outdoors.
BRP says sales were up 35% in the first three weeks of May across its global dealers network as people look for ways to stay busy while remaining socially distant. Yet the company still expects a 40% drop in revenue in the three months through July. Production won’t fully resume till next week, leaving it unable to fully replenish inventories until later in the quarter.
“We totally understand and accept why we needed to do it but when you see now that customers want to buy and we have difficulty to ramp up, it’s definitely a frustration,” Chief Executive Officer Jose Boisjoli said in an interview. “Our factory will be loaded from June 1 until the end of the fiscal year.”
Shutdowns curtailed about two months of production capacity, according to Boisjoli, also hurting shipments in the quarter that ended April 30, when revenue dropped 7.8%. The Valcourt, Quebec-based company was forced to scale back investment plans and said it would end its unprofitable production of outboard motors for boats, laying off 650 people in the U.S.
Shares of BRP, which is partly owned by Bain Capital, fell 4.1% in New York Thursday. While they’re down 22% this year, they’ve more than doubled from a March low. The recent gains led RBC Capital Markets analyst Steven Arthur to downgrade his rating to sector perform from outperform Friday.
In the U.S., shares of Thor Industries Inc. and Winnebago Industries Inc., the two largest publicly-traded recreational vehicle makers, have also more than doubled since hitting bottom in March. Cooped-up consumers looking for recreation — but fearing the coronavirus — have flocked to campers and trailers that let them travel while staying away from others.
The U.S. is BRP’s strongest market, followed by Canada and Europe, Boisjoli said. Brazil and Mexico are still in more acute phases of the pandemic, he said.
All-terrain vehicles have been popular while demand for watercraft products such as the Ski-Doo recently saw a spike, Boisjoli said. An internal survey showed 30% of North American customers in the past month were new to its products, compared with 20% usually.
While record high unemployment and sinking consumer confidence may jeopardize the momentum, Boisjoli touted the vehicles as ideal for social distancing.
“We’re not happy with this global crisis but we could be an industry that is favored by the situation,” he said.(Updates with RBC downgrade in fifth paragraph.)
–With assistance from Michael Bellusci.


fortune--2020-05-31--Amazon shuts hubs near protests; Target closes more stores

Amazon.com Inc. is scaling back deliveries and adjusting routes in a small number of cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, and Target Corp. is extending store closures nationwide after the death of George Floyd sparked demonstrations across the country.
“We are monitoring the situation closely and in a handful of cities we adjusted routes or scaled back typical operations to ensure the safety of our teams,” an Amazon spokeswoman told Bloomberg News.
Amazon’s action shows how protests around the country are complicating operations for the e-commerce giant, which has been one of the few consumer-facing companies to benefit during the coronavirus pandemic. Target has been trying to build its online sales business, but retains a heavy bricks-and-mortar presence.
Based in Minneapolis where Floyd died in police custody, Target had already closed 32 stores in the area. On Sunday, it said it was closing dozens more around the nation, at least temporarily.
“We are a community in pain,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said in a statement shortly after Floyd’s death. “That pain is not unique to the Twin Cities — it extends across America.”
In Chicago and Los Angeles, Amazon delivery drivers received messages Saturday night that said: “If you are currently out delivering packages, stop immediately and return home. If you have not completed your route, please return undelivered packages to the pick-up location whenever you’re able to do so.”
Amazon was “in close contact with local officials and will continue to monitor the protests,” and would only re-open delivery stations when it’s safe and will plan delivery routes by monitoring demonstrations in every zip code, according to messages reviewed by Bloomberg.


fortune--2020-05-31--Emirates Group says job cuts needed with planes grounded

Emirates Group said it will be forced to cut jobs as the operator of the world’s largest long-haul carrier seeks to reduce costs after the coronavirus pandemic grounded air travel.
The company has “come to the conclusion that we unfortunately have to say goodbye to a few of the wonderful people that worked with us,” according to a statement distributed by Dubai’s media office. “We continuously are reassessing the situation and will have to adapt to this transitional period.”
Emirates didn’t say how many jobs will be lost.
The Dubai-based group could slash the number of employees by about 30% from more than 105,000 at the end of March, people familiar with the matter said last month. Emirates is also considering accelerating the retirement of its fleet of Airbus SEA380s — of which it is the biggest operator, some of the people said, declining to be identified because the information hasn’t been made public.
Dubai’s government said in March it would financially support the airline, which has taken a slew of measures to shore up cash since the virus outbreak. Those include temporarily cutting salaries, grounding most of its passenger flights and deferring the delivery of the last batch of the A380 superjumbos.
Sunday’s statement also said:


fortune--2020-05-31--Why the Upwork CEO believes the pandemic will lead to more work with freelancers

Upwork, a platform connecting companies with remote freelancers, faces an interesting challenge, according to chief executive Hayden Brown: Customers don’t always want to shout it from the rooftops that they use freelancers.
“Our customers always talk about us as their secret sauce,” Brown says, noting that clients often say that adding talent from Upwork gives them an advantage they don’t want their competitors to know about. But there’s also a hesitation “to admit that they’re using these alternatives because [using freelancers] can seem unfashionable.”
The novel coronavirus pandemic might be changing that. Upwork’s CEO believes that the drastic shift to remote work for so many will accelerate the conversation around how companies build their workforce—and employee bases are likely to be constructed in more flexible ways moving forward, she says, with a combination of in-office staff, full-time remote employees, and freelancers.
Upwork, which grew revenue 19% to $300 million in 2019 and leads the market against competitors like Fiverr, Outsourcely, and Flexjobs, already had thousands of freelancers signing up daily—in 2019, 35% of the American workforce freelanced in some capacity, according to a company survey—before the pandemic. That growth has since exploded as more than 40 million people across the U.S. have filed for unemployment in the wake of a pandemic-induced economic downturn.
“We were seeing our freelancer registration numbers routinely 80% to 100% higher,” Brown says.
Now it’s time for Brown, who took the top job in January after serving as the company’s chief marketing and product officer, to connect those willing freelancers with companies who are, she says, figuring out how to adapt their businesses with a leaner staff.
“Our platform was built for remote work. It’s built for freelance talent, and suddenly those two things are even more top of mind for executives than ever before,” she says. “We have this surplus of incredible talent that is ready and able to work. So we really are just trying to make the most of this moment to connect these two sides of what’s possible—taking advantage of the fact that people’s mindsets and behaviors have undergone a fundamental change that, I think, will be largely permanent, around how they think about remote work and accessing talent that is not at the next desk.”
Upwork maintains databases of freelancers in dozens of categories, but the chief executive says that the job skills she’s seeing companies gravitate toward right now track with how businesses have had to shift during the coronavirus crisis. The big three: technical skills to build out web presences; marketing and advertising work to redeploy messaging; and customer support and operations.
Brown says that new company sign-ups have broken records at Upwork, and she’s excited for what this might mean for what’s to come. Tech giants have led the way with making work-from-home policies more long-term, and some companies are even viewing it as a permanent solution. Being prepared to work effectively remotely is crucial in onboarding freelancers.
“Companies are really evaluating their fixed cost structure that they have around full-time employees and the level of flexibility they have to spin teams up and down as business needs are changing,” she says, noting that during past economic challenges, companies have tended to bring on contract and freelance employees before resuming full-time hiring.
And it may be necessary if more of the workforce goes freelance. During the recession in 2008–2009, Brown says, the company saw indicators that people were thinking differently about their relationship with full-time work.
“The idea that they had this one lifeline of safety and security, and if they were laid off or if that employer was going under suddenly, they were really exposed,” she explains. “So we saw a shift of more people into the freelance workforce.”
She wouldn’t be surprised if that uptick happened yet again. In the company’s annual survey, which Upwork conducted in partnership with Freelancers Union, the share of full-time freelancers nearly doubled from 2014 to 2019, and more than half of the freelancers responded that they were freelancing out of choice.
“They preferred this as a better way of working, which is fascinating,” she adds. “And a number of folks also said, ‘There’s no amount of money you could pay me to go back to full-time work.’”
Brown says she’s talked to freelancers on the Upwork platform who feel more secure during the current economic downturn because of freelancing: They can build a portfolio with multiple clients, so if one has to pull back, they aren’t losing everything.
So as companies form their COVID-19 task forces and make their plans to reopen, Brown hopes they’ll use freelancers, who she calls a “hidden part of the economy in the labor market,” as a tool in their arsenal—through Upwork, of course.
“They’re opening their eyes to getting more comfortable working with people who are not on site in their offices and are realizing that they have strategic benefits to be gained through flexing their talent pools much more dynamically than what they’ve done in the past.”


fortune--2020-05-31--More Republican women than ever are seeking House seats this year

More Republican women than ever are seeking House seats this year thanks to a reenergized recruitment effort after their limited ranks in Congress diminished even further in the 2018 election. But any gains in November could be modest.
Many of these roughly 200 candidates are running in safe Democratic districts. In friendlier Republican territory, some have struggled to win primaries and are facing long-standing challenges, including fundraising, that the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated. That’s left some of these women questioning their party’s commitment to the effort and warning about longer-term effects.
“If you don’t have a Republican woman running in a winnable seat, it doesn’t really matter,” said Julie Conway, a Republican consultant who leads the Value In Empowering Women PAC, which supports GOP women for federal office.
Some Republicans fear that failing to elect more women will hurt the party as female voters increasingly are supporting Democrats. That shift, particularly in suburban areas, helped Democrats pick up enough seats to win control of the House in 2018, and will be a critical factor as Republicans try to win back the chamber this fall.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Michael McAdams noted that more than half of the party’s 21 “Young Guns” — candidates running in the most competitive districts — are women. They include Genevieve Collins, a Dallas businesswoman who defeated four men in the GOP primary to face Democratic Rep. Colin Allred.
The next test comes Tuesday in states such as Indiana, where Republican Rep. Susan Brooks — one of 13 Republican women in the House — is retiring. With more than a dozen candidates vying for the GOP nomination, there’s no guarantee a woman will win or be able to hold the seat if she does.
Democrats have been eyeing the district, which includes parts of Indianapolis and its fast-growing suburbs, as a potential pickup, due largely to the suburban women who have turned against President Donald Trump and the GOP. The likely Democratic nominee is Christina Hale, a former state lawmaker.
Republican women have always had a tougher time winning office. The party has eschewed identity politics, operating more as a meritocracy that believes the best candidate will rise to the top, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.
Voters often perceive women as less conservative than men, and particularly in the South, voters may have more socially conservative views about gender roles, in which politics is more of a man’s job, Walsh said.
There’s also a significant difference between the two parties in financial support for female candidates. Groups that back GOP women have nowhere near the resources of organizations such as EMILY’s List, which has existed much longer and has been a game changer for Democratic women. The three main PACs focused on electing GOP women have raised about $1.7 million combined for this election cycle as of April 30, compared with more than $48 million by EMILY’s List.
Money has been critical since the coronavirus outbreak, which has made traditional grassroots campaigning such as door knocking nearly impossible and benefited candidates who can afford to run TV and digital advertising.
In Indiana, that’s helped elevate Republican state Sen. Victoria Spartz, who has loaned her congressional campaign roughly $700,000. But her lack of campaign experience — she won her seat after a caucus vote to fill the vacancy — and far-right record has some in the party worried that Republicans will lose if she is the nominee.
The Value In Empowering Women PAC is backing state Treasurer Kelly Mitchell for Brooks’ seat. Mitchell was the first woman elected county commissioner in her county more than two decades ago, when people questioned whether the then-20-something mother really wanted to spend her days focused on drainage and highway issues. She completed a leadership program for Republican women, and she credits other women in the program with leading her campaign for treasurer.
But Mitchell said she doesn’t talk about gender with voters, focusing instead on her experience and education, and she cites what she says is her record of overcoming adversity.
“When they send me to D.C., they will send a fighter,” Mitchell said. “I talk about that often.”
Republican Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama is also leaving Congress, and she will be replaced by a man. Businessman Jeff Coleman and former state lawmaker Barry Moore were the top finishers in a March primary and face a runoff. Businesswoman Jessica Taylor narrowly missed qualifying for the runoff.
Republican women appear to have gained one seat in central Illinois, where Mary Miller won the nomination for a safe GOP district where Rep. John Shimkus is retiring. In Iowa, Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks are in good positions to win GOP primaries, though they would face tough general elections. Hinson is running in the district represented by Democratic Rep. Abby Finkenauer, who is seeking a second term, and Miller-Meeks is seeking a seat vacated by Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack.
Among difficult losses for GOP women, Illinois state Sen. Sue Rezin lost a tight congressional primary in a Chicago-area district that Republicans held for decades before Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood flipped it in 2018.
Rezin has won four elections — three of them top-tier state races — and was the opponent Democrats feared most in a general election. But she struggled to compete in fundraising and lost to state Sen. Jim Oberweis, who loaned his campaign $1 million.
Rezin said the pandemic was a factor. She modeled her campaign on turnout of around 80,000 but only about 35,000 voted in the March 17 primary. In the weeks leading up to the election, people were scared to even open their doors for fear of spread of the coronavirus, her team said.
But the overriding issue, Rezin said, is that for all the GOP chatter about supporting women, the party hasn’t gotten serious about committing to helping women win.
“The days of checking the box are over,” she said. “If our party continues to just check the box for women, we lose and Democrats win.”


fortune--2020-05-31--‘I literally was locked up abroad’: The diary of a cruise director during the coronavirus pandemic

The past year in the life of Christine Streets, a onetime Mrs. Iowa and reality TV personality, has been nothing short of insane. A cruise and travel director for Holland America Line (HAL), the 147-year-old subsidiary of the Carnival Corporation, Streets, 39, escaped likely death last fall when she was medevaced from a cruise ship with a ruptured bowel. She went into septic shock and spent two months recovering in New Zealand before moving to the Netherlands in December to live with her now-fiancé, an engineer for HAL. She returned to work just as the threat of the novel coronavirus started to make news in America. On March 4—with her Iowan parents and her boyfriend, who proposed that day, along for the ride—Street set off from Fort Lauderdale aboard HAL’s largest ship, the Koningsdam, on a voyage that would eventually be upended by the global pandemic and leave her and 1,200 other cruise ship crew members “on a mental roller coaster,” indefinitely stuck at sea.
Streets and her American and Canadian colleagues were allowed, under strict conditions, to leave the Koningsdam on May 8, but hundreds of her colleagues remain, even today, at sea—refused entry by many countries, including their own. The ship, which in late April took on the crews of six other ships and is functioning as a repatriation ship, has had no reported cases of COVID-19. The situation is hardly unique: There are thousands of cruise workers stuck at sea around the world, unable to return home because of COVID-19-related restrictions. In the past few weeks, six of those crew members have reportedly died by suicide.
Streets, who is quarantining at her parents’ home in Eldridge, Iowa, spoke with Fortune in mid-May, days after returning home from her 55 days stuck at sea on the Koningsdam. She is in the process of filing for unemployment; she does not know when she will next be working for HAL. Days before her homecoming, her fiancé left to work on one of HAL’s ships in the Philippines.
Streets’ account has been edited for clarity and length.
Pre-pandemic
I went to Drake University in Des Moines for broadcast news, but I ended up doing some commercials for Holland America Line, and then I just started working for them about eight years ago. I worked my way up from event manager to cruise director to cruise and travel director.
Our ships range anywhere from 1,000 guests all the way up to 2,300 guests. We have about 823 crew members on board. It’s my job to represent all of the crew members and represent the company.
On my average day, I wake up around 6:30 a.m. I’m in full hair and makeup and in the office by 8. I’m walking around, saying hi to the guests, meeting and greeting, taking any questions they might have. I usually do two big presentations for them, teaching them about the ports of call where we’ll be visiting. I have a 5 p.m. announcement with the captain, basically updating everybody about what activities are happening around the ship. I am working a 14-hour day, running around the ship trying to mingle with every single guest I possibly can. I work three months on—every day, no days off—and then three months off. We’re used to being at sea for six to 10 days max.
I enjoy working there. I will tell you we live in our own bubble. Most of the shifts I work on have people of about 38 different nationalities. Everyone has a different background—it’s literally a perfect world on the ship. We all get along.
Obviously there are a lot of rumors about the cruise industry, and I would say 99% of the things people say are false. Everybody thinks we’re underpaid, which is not true. You know, let’s just say people of 38 different nationalities, they’re being paid in U.S. dollars—they take that back to the Philippines or Indonesia—that’s a lot of money they’re making per month. They’re supporting families. They make a great living, and as an American citizen, I’ve made a great living and a great life on the ship.
March 4, 2020
My parents here in Eldridge and my now-fiancé boarded the ship with me on March 4 in Fort Lauderdale. (My fiancé proposed to me that day.) They were on an 11-day voyage with me. I was never really worried about COVID-19. On cruise ships we deal with “the GI” [norovirus] for example—a couple of people get it and then touch other people, and we’re used to making sure that it does not spread on ships. We’ve been trained in all this, so I was never worried that something was going to come on our ship and get everyone sick. But of course, reading the stories, there was a lot of news going around. We didn’t know what to believe and what not to believe. Our company was really good with getting us updates as we went.
I kept reassuring the guests because people were getting upset. They’re reading the news, and they’re like, “Just stop the cruise now. We need to get home.” The captain was doing updates to the cruisers, and he brought the nurses and doctors on in the last couple of days to explain what was going on.
It was a really good thing to have my parents on board. I kept saying to everybody: “My dad, he’s had cancer. He’s not in good health. If we had this virus on board, do you think that I would let my own father be walking around the ship right now? I feel safe. You should feel safe. You need to trust me and the captain.” We didn’t have any cases. A few people in the comments, which I get to read when they leave, said that I was the “calm in the storm.”
March 15
When my family left on March 15, I kissed them all goodbye, and then all of a sudden we weren’t starting a new cruise. The company had called the guests who were coming to the new cruise almost 24 hours prior—it was shut down really quickly. A lot of these people were coming in from far, far away because it was our special voyage around South America. I was supposed to be gone for two months.
The crew set sail on the ship, but we had no guests. I thought we’d be starting back up again in a week. I look back at what I documented on day three or day six, and I had so much spirit and fire, thinking, “Wooh! I’m having a day off!” I would end up having 55 days off.
At first, the company implemented social distancing. We knew we couldn’t be close to each other and things like that, but around the ship we kind of went on with normal life. We made sure the crew members had the gym to use—only 10 could go in at a time—and they were at the pool. They were lounging. They were sunbathing. For the first two weeks, it was literally as if the crew got to take over the ship like a mini-vacation.
Then things started to step up. Corporate said we were going to be on there longer and wanted all the crew out of crew cabins. We did our best to give everybody a cabin either with a window or a nice veranda. We didn’t know how serious everything was because, again, on a cruise ship, we’re all in our own little bubble. All we knew is that we were safe. No one was sick on the ship.
We had activities for the crew—different things every day, everything from lip-synch competitions to karaoke nights and bingo. Then, all of a sudden, I think it was week three or four, all that had to stop. There were other ships that were starting to send pictures out. Social media is everything these days. People were taking pictures where they weren’t social distancing, and they were doing all these activities. Finally corporate said, “We’ve got to stop this. Even though you’re a healthy ship, the ship needs to social distance as well.”
We took away all the basketballs and shuffleboard and anything that could be touched and locked all that away. Every three days, we were sanitizing the whole ship. We went from this whole program to do-it-yourself: Do whatever you guys want, just please stay away from each other.
We didn’t know when we’d get off. The CDC was changing the rules all the time. I mean, the company would come up with a plan, and then the plan would get shut down or change the next day. Luckily, being on a cruise ship, we’re used to changing environments. But it was just constant, constant changing. [Editor’s note: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s No Sail Order for cruise ships in U.S. waters went into effect on March 14. The agency shared requirements with cruise lines on April 23 for disembarking crew members in the U.S. A HAL spokesperson said the company worked with the CDC to gain and maintain clarification on the agency’s various new requirements during this unprecedented time.]
For example, we thought we were going to go around South America, take our time, and then come up toward San Diego. But the weather was getting bad in South America, and we wanted to get to California as soon as we could to get our crew members home. So the company paid a tremendous amount of money to get us through the Panama Canal. We weren’t supposed to go through the Panama Canal. We’re the Koningsdam—it’s our biggest ship, and because of its size, it was never intended to go through.
The captain and the other engineers and the bridge officers had to do a lot of work to the ship to make sure that we could actually get through the canal. It was a really big deal. Once we got that done, we started heading up toward San Pedro. And we’re thinking, “Okay, they’re going to let the Americans and the Canadians off in San Pedro.” I did offer to stay because, obviously, as one of the heads of departments, I didn’t want to leave my team, but my captain was saying, “Chris, you need to leave. We don’t know when you’ll be able to get off again. If you get a chance, you’ve got to go.”
April 22
In the morning, the two other Americans and I got called down to the medical unit. They said we needed to sign health declaration forms for clearance. So we figured we’re going to get off. I told the others, “If I were you, I’d head to your room, and finish up packing now. I think something’s happening.” I got my airport clothes on. I took an extra shower to get ready for a long day of flying, and nothing happened. We sat, and we waited and waited. I’m sitting there looking at my bag sitting in my room—and nothing. We ended up sailing away from San Pedro that night. [Editor’s note: Though the CDC had not yet shared formal information regarding the process to disembark crew members on April 22—the agency issued the rules the following day—Streets says the Koningsdam was turned away because HAL hadn’t secured crew the private charter flights required to disembark.]
I’ve never felt so—I am a very positive person—but I was disgusted. I was upset. I didn’t understand. I’ve represented the state of Iowa as Mrs. Iowa. I’ve been to 103 countries, and I represent the United States everywhere I go. And here, I’m in the United States, and you will not let me in my country. It was the weirdest thing.
I handle stress very well—I just got done with two months in a hospital by myself in New Zealand after being medevaced off a ship—and I ended up downstairs in medical myself, sitting there smiling to one of the doctors but crying hysterically. They gave me a puzzle and sleeping pills. They said I needed activity because I’m so used to go, go, go, go, go.
That was my hardest day. Even thinking about it, it makes me very upset. Growing up American, even though I’m just from a middle-class family, I grew up more privileged than most of the people that I work with. Being American, I always knew that I had this protection of being from the United States of America. I was so proud. And I tried not to have harsh feelings toward my country because I love being American, but man, I thought, “I’m a citizen. And I’m just Christine from Eldridge, Iowa. Why won’t you let me in?” I’ve watched Locked Up Abroad my whole life—I literally was locked up abroad.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley’s office tried to help, but their hands were tied with the rules from the CDC. There were about three emails that came from Grassley’s office that were like, “Christine, we just want to touch base. There’s nothing we can do, but we wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
On the Internet, everybody is going back and forth—it’s the cruise line’s fault; they don’t want to spend money; or it’s the CDC’s fault. I’m not trying to stick up for my company, but when you look at the rules from the CDC of what they needed to do to get us ashore, it was absolutely impossible. There were all these rules. They basically wanted private charter jets for every single person. We couldn’t use the bathrooms or walk into any place, from point A to point B. If the state of Iowa had sent me a private jet themselves, I still couldn’t have gotten ashore because they would have needed to work with the ship and with the CDC with a 72-hour notice. But we couldn’t give a 72-hour notice because we never knew when we were going to be in a port. [Editor’s note: All of the CDC’s requirements are spelled out here. An agency spokesperson said while the CDC requests 72 hours’ notice, the organization has approved many requests to disembark crew with a same-day turnaround.]
The attestation form Christine Streets had to sign before disembarking from the Koningsdam. On the right, the attestation form the CDC requires cruise ship companies to sign before disembarking crew members. The CDC shared the attestation forms on April 23, the day after Streets’ San Pedro experience. Courtesy of Christine Streets; CDC
That night, I stood on my balcony, I took a picture, and I literally watched my country in the background as we sailed away. I was so upset, but then once we got back out to the sea, past international waters, I was fine because I knew I was back to seafarer status. I knew that next day, I was going to have 965 people wondering how I acted because I was just not let in by my own country, and they were all going to be watching how I handled this. l put a smile on my face and I’m like, “It is what it is. I guess I’m not meant to be on land yet, and I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to help out.” And that’s what happened.
April 27
Holland America Line decided that the Koningsdam was going to be a repatriation ship. We ultimately had crew from seven different ships on the Koningsdam—1,200 employees from 70 different countries.
I was the head person to take care of every ship crew that came onboard. We had already sent away all of our Asian crew members to different ships—to coordinate the process of getting people home, one ship took Indonesians, one ship took the Filipino crew, and then our ship took all non-Asian crew. We had lots of people from South America, South Africa, Europe. We brought the other crews over in 48 hours. We made sure that when they came on, no one cross-contaminated with another crew. We have fire zones on a ship, and so we all were in different areas. We had different eating times. We got 30 minutes to eat meals. My dinner was at five o’clock. I’ve never eaten at five o’clock in my life, but I had to because there was so many ship crews on board. I had 15 minutes to get my food, 15 minutes to sit down and eat it. But they fed us well. I ended up gaining 15 pounds.
We were all self-isolating. I was known as “the Lean Mean Christine” by the captain because I kept going over the PA system and saying, “Okay, it seems like some of you don’t know what self-isolating is. Let me explain.” I was having to be the main person around the ship keeping them in check—letting people know there couldn’t be cabin parties. No, you cannot go to your neighbor’s place. No, you cannot sit and socialize with them. I was having to hammer them with rules 24/7.
We had stuff on TV, over 300 movies to watch. But there’s only so much you can do in your room, and a lot of these people had other issues going on with family back home. I remember hearing about a crew member whose wife was having twins, and she had died in labor. He had to stay on the ship. He’s still on the ship, and he’s had to mourn there. We’re used to that as seafarers, but we had a lot of people who had deaths of brothers, sisters, parents, and they have to sit in their room and mourn. When you’re stuck in a cabin and you can’t do anything and you’re by yourself all those hours, that’s a lot.
What I was going through was different than my colleagues. My colleagues were sitting in a room with no work, not doing anything. I was working a crazy amount of hours. I had created WhatsApp groups on the ship, and I was trying to answer questions. They’re reaching out to me: “Christine, I need to get to Argentina. I need to get to Peru. Any news on Europe?” I didn’t have answers for them. The captain didn’t have answers for them. No one had answers for them. The problem is that they couldn’t see an end in sight.
The hardest part was not having an answer. I was the one they could get at to ask questions, but I didn’t know anything. We’d be sitting in the meetings every morning, and the hotel director and the captain would say, “I don’t have an update for today.” Everyone was doing everything they could to keep people updated, but when information came in, it was coming in last minute. You don’t know anything until 24 hours in advance. I don’t know how headquarters was dealing with this or even how they’re continuing to do it. It’s just a complete mess.
May 8
My hands were shaking, and my face mask wet from crying when I reached land in Los Angeles. HAL made arrangements, and our charter plane made stops in Indiana, Connecticut, and Toronto. I got off in Indiana, walked through the small terminal and yelled, “That’s my Uncle Ron!” He drove me the six hours to Iowa.
I don’t quite know how I got off the ship. Out of 1,200 employees from 70 different countries on board, we only had 53 Americans and Canadians. So, 53 of us were able to get off. I think it had a lot to do with the press. Some people went against the company’s social media policy before they said it was okay that we could talk and caused a stir. It made headlines all over. We were also close to our country. It left a bad taste in a lot of my crew members’ mouths—why do Americans and Canadians get to get off and we’re still stuck here?
Four crew members from cruise ships stuck at sea have committed suicide. [Editor’s note: At least two more crew members from ships around the world have reportedly taken their lives.] If only they could have just gotten home or gotten off their ships. It doesn’t shock me at all that this has happened. What they’re going through on the ship of being in self-isolation—I mean, sitting here in Iowa, this is the easy life. I’m in a house. I’ve got all the amenities. I can walk around. I’ve got family around me. If I wanted to, I could get into a car. I couldn’t go in places right now because I’m supposed to be self-isolating, but I have things I can do.
On a ship, you are literally handed your food three times a day. You are lucky if you have fresh-air breaks three times a day. Otherwise you’re in your room. You can talk to your friends and family on the Internet, but the Internet connection is so bad.
Most of these people are providing for a whole family at home. And now they’re stuck on a ship with no pay. They can’t get home to even get a job to help their family, and they’re getting very desperate. I’ve seen the WhatsApp chats going through, and our crew right now is like, “Please know that if you need to talk to someone, we’re here. We’re all in this together.”
I think the company was generous with what they did do. My contract was supposed to be until May 23. We need a certain amount of people to stay on the ship, roughly 200 people to be our minimal crew so their contracts kept going. For the rest of us, our contracts all ended on May 9. We signed a sheet and got 30 days’ notice. I got paid full up until then, and 50% of my pay until May 23. So, you either got 50% of your pay or $500, whichever was greater. [Editor’s note: HAL would not disclose specific wage details, but a company spokesperson said HAL had exceeded its contractual obligations in terms of compensating crew members waiting to be repatriated.]
I’m not trying to boast about my company, but I will say they did absolutely everything they could possibly do. Their hands kept getting tied. Every single time they would try to do something, new rules would come into play. There were all these emails from corporate saying, “We’re sorry, we tried this. And now we’ve been shut down on this so we’re going to try plan B now plan C, now plan F.”
The ship is going to be docking in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and 200 crew members, mostly European crew members, are expected to get off. Another one of our ships is pulling into South Africa. They’re taking people to Cape Town. For cruise lines to have to literally sail around to all these different ports—if they just would have let us get one commercial flight to take people places. For my private jet, it was $10,000 an hour.
Some countries have completely closed their borders; some have been more open. With the U.S., there was a ship that was trying to dock in Fort Lauderdale a month and a half ago trying to get passengers off. There were sick people on there. They made it a big deal. They didn’t want anybody to get off in Fort Lauderdale. It’s the No. 2 cruise port in the whole United States. No one was wanting us in, and it caused even more problems when they kept closing borders. It’s just adding to this.
You get all these people who think they know the cruise industry. And they all want to have their opinion on Facebook or in the comments even though it’s based on ignorance. I started the battle of responding as nicely as I could to different people. But then I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep up with fixing every single person’s opinion of the cruise industry.
Of course, our cruisers are excited to come back. People are saying the cruise industry is done now, but we’re going to be fine. Holland America has been around for 147 years, through two World Wars, the Great Depression. I just hate seeing everybody wanting to come back right away because I know my colleagues are still out there not even able to get home yet.
I was never scared of the coronavirus. I guess I should have been. I have people that I know that have had it. One woman on one of the HAL ships did have it and she survived. From the start we were a healthy ship, and we maintained that for 55 days.
[Editor’s note: A HAL spokesperson says approximately 550 crew members aboard the Koningsdam are still waiting to be repatriated. The company expects to have repatriated the vast majority of crew members by mid-June and is currently providing telephone counseling and other support services to crew, including those experiencing loss and grief. The CDC says it has worked with cruise lines to help over 7,000 crew members, 277 of them Americans, return home during the pandemic.]