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Poland’s lawmakers have approved a controversial government plan to raise the retirement age to 67 for most Poles.

The lower chamber of Parliament voted Friday 268 to 185 with 2 abstentions to approve changes sought by the pro-business government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which argues that delayed retirement will help Poles build up larger pensions and reduce state spending.

Trade unions have vehemently opposed the plan and were staging a noisy protest outside Parliament.

The current law allows women to retire at age 60 and men at 65. The armed forces and some other services have even more lenient regulations which the new law also seeks to toughen up.

The new law still needs approval from the Senate and from President Bronislaw Komorowski.

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No one took issue with Antonio Hegwood’s dreadlocks when he worked for the temp service. Or the fast food restaurant before that.

But in mid-April, four months after a service station and convenience store hired him as an overnight clerk, Hegwood learned his hair style had suddenly became a problem.

Hegwood, 24, hasn’t been fired. But he hasn’t collected a paycheck since.

His supervisors at a St. Louis Petro Mart have told Hegwood that he’s welcome to return to work — if he shears the dreadlocks that run about halfway down his neck.

Hegwood doesn’t understand the fuss.

“It’s a gas station,” he said. “People aren’t going to not buy gas just because the clerk has dreads.”

Policies on the personal grooming habits of employees land on the edge of state and federal employment discrimination laws.

Companies doing business in Missourihave the right to terminate or suspend any employee that doesn’t meet established guidelines addressing hair, tattoos or dress.

“An employer may condition a job on an employee’s compliance with the employer’s hair styling preferences, unless the employee’s alternative hair styling preference is connected with the employee’s inclusion in a protected category,” Missouri Department of Labor spokeswoman Amy Susan explained in an e-mail. “For example, a particular hair style may be a tenet of the employee’s religion, or the employer may decline to hire a prospective employee because the employee is considered to be disabled because of his or her hair style (such as believing someone without hair to be suffering from cancer).”

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a bit more exacting. It looks at how various groups of people wearing various hairstyles are treated in comparison to other groups.

“The baseline for evaluating grooming policies is to look at their overall burden on different groups of employees,” EEOC spokeswoman Justine Lisser wrote in a general overview of the Petro Mart matter.

“…If an employer prohibits a range of hair styles, such as both corn rows and mohawks, and the no cornrows/dreadlocks policy affects 30% of its African-American employees while the no mohawks affects only 3% of its white employees, we could say that the policy had a disparate impact on African-Americans, even if it applies to all employees.”

Hegwood has sported dreads on and off for years. The dreadlocks were in place when he applied for and was offered the $8 business cards.50-an-hour position at Petro Mart late last year.

“They didn’t say anything about it then,” he said.

Nor, Hegwood added, was there any mention of the dreads posing a threat to safety or the health of co-workers.

Owned and operated by Western Oil Co. in Earth City, Petro Mart does have a written policy stipulating that hair should be “kept neat and clean…immoderate styles… such as corn rows, braids etc. must be approved by a supervisor…dreadlocks and mohawks are unacceptable.”

Western Oil did not respond to requests for a response.

A father of three, Hegwood doesn’t know how long he can take a principled stand against Petro Mart and its grooming policy.

He needs a salary to support his children and pay for the remainder of his education at St. Louis Community College-Forest Park, where Hegwood hopes to earn a degree in business.

The worst of the job crisis may be over — unemployment in the St. Louis region dropped to 8.1 percent in March.

But back in the hunt four months after starting a job “I really liked,” Hegwood fears landing employment remains a challenge.

“Maybe I’ll start my own business,” he said, looking ahead. “That way I can wear my hair anyway I want.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“We’re all technology companies at heart. Whether you’re a law firm or a bank, the core of your company is technology. And that is kind of shaking the core of the office today.” — Thomas Vecchione, head of Workplace Design at Gensler, the global architectural firm, on the work space evolution that includes “free range” offices in which employees take a seat each day at whatever desk is available.

Source: The Point, WBUR/Boston

BY THE NUMBERS

3.9 million - The population of Oregon — and the number of Americans who continue to suffer the effects of unemployment lasting more than a year. The long-term unemployed represent 29.5 of the nation’s jobless.

Source: The Pew Charitable Trusts

FINAL WORD

“You know, how could you not look?” - Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III on whether he tracks the struggles of a former employee, Albert Pujols, in the box scores each day.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Chinese tourists traveling to Europe to take advantage of savings as much as 50 percent on designer clothes and accessories are finding fewer bargains.

LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC) and its peers are raising prices to make up for lost business in China and lower profitability outside the country, even if it puts items like 2,270-euro ($3,000) Lockit handbags further out of reach for Europeans whose disposable incomes are shrinking amid austerity.

The unemployment rates in almost all metropolitan areas dropped in January from a year earlier, and a majority were lower than the national rate, the Labor Department said on Friday.

Jobless rates decreased in 345 of the 372 areas, which typically include a city and its surrounding suburbs, and those in Decatur, Alabama, and Monroe, Michigan, dropped the most.

At the same time, 201 areas recorded January unemployment rates below the U.S. rate of 8.8 percent, not seasonally adjusted. Frequently, the Labor Department will adjust jobs numbers to account for seasonal factors such as holiday hiring or weather.

The seasonally adjusted national jobless rate in February and January was 8.3 percent.

While the effects of the recession that began in 2007 were nearly uniform across the country, the recovery has been far more uneven, with areas where housing had fueled the local economies still hurting fast cash advance.

The states of Nevada and California have the highest unemployment rates in the country, and their limping job markets can be seen on the local level.

El Centro, an inland town in southern California, held the highest unemployment rate in the country in January, 26.4 percent, followed by Arizona’s Yuma, where the rate was 24.5 percent. Meanwhile, 10 of the other 11 areas with jobless rates of at least 15 percent or more were in California.

Of the 49 areas with a population of 1 million or more, Nevada’s Las Vegas-Paradise region had the highest jobless rate, 13.1 percent.

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Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty plans to include new measures to expedite environmental approvals for energy projects in next week

China (CNGDPYOY) signaled caution toward more monetary loosening by holding off on a reduction in bank reserve requirements that some economists had predicted would come before a week-long holiday ending Jan. 28.

Barclays Capital Asia Ltd., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Industrial Bank Co. said this month that ratios were likely to fall ahead of the Lunar New Year festival, which boosts demand for cash. The central bank instead used reverse-repurchase contracts to add money to the financial system.

Premier Wen Jiabao seeks to steer the world

Companies added more workers than forecast in December, a sign that the U.S. labor market was gaining momentum heading into 2012, according to a private report based on payrolls.

The 325,000 increase was the highest in records going back to 2001 and exceeded the highest projection in a Bloomberg News survey after a revised 204,000 gain the prior month, the report from the Roseland, New Jersey-based ADP Employer Services showed today. The median estimate called for an advance of 178,000.

An acceleration in hiring may spur further gains in consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the world

TNK-BP, a Russian joint venture of British oil giant BP, said Wednesday it will invest up to $10 billion in developing Arctic oilfields.

The company, half-owned by BP and Russian billionaires, said in a statement that up to $10 billion will be spent on building infrastructure at the fields and a pipeline that will link them with the export pipeline.

Russian oil companies have been drawing up plans to move to the oil and gas-rich Arctic as mature fields in Western Siberia are getting depleted.

TNK-BP said an agreement with Russia’s pipeline monopolist Transneft will allow it to connect its Arctic oil fields to the export pipeline in Russia’s Far East mainly aimed at Chinese customers.

TNK-BP will be able to ship oil through the Zapolyaryev-Purpe pipeline, which is expected to be built by 2016 to become a key link between Arctic resources and the main east and westbound pipeline routes.

The company said it expects to start shipments from new fields in the Yamal region in 2015. Its fields in the region are estimated to hold 5 billion barrels of oil.

TNK-BP’s executive German Khan described in the statement cooperation between oil companies and state-owned Transneft as “one of the most important conditions for putting new fields into development and efficiently developing the abundant resources of the region.”

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ST. PETERS

Advancing floodwaters in Thailand shut down commercial flights Tuesday at Bangkok’s second airport, spilling across a complex housing the country’s flood relief headquarters in one of the biggest blows yet to government attempts to prevent the sprawling capital from being swamped.

The effective closure of Don Muang airport, which is used primarily for domestic flights, was sure to further erode public confidence in the ability of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s administration to defend the increasingly anxious metropolis of 9 million people.

Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport, the country’s main international gateway, has yet to be affected by flooding and flights there were operating normally. Most of the city has been spared inundation so far.

Don Muang has come to symbolize the gravity of the Southeast Asian nation’s deepening crisis, which has seen advancing waters drown a third of the country and kill 366 people over the last three months.

The airport houses the government’s recently established emergency Flood Relief Operations Center, and one of its terminals has been converted into an overcrowded shelter filled with tents for about 4,000 people who fled waterlogged homes.

Somboon Klinchanhom, a 43-year-old civil servant who took refuge there last week, was preparing to move after authorities said the terminal had become too overcrowded and thousands of displaced people would be relocated to other shelters.

“I thought it would be safe and well-protected,” Somboon said of the airport, as she packed her belongings again.

Outside, ankle-high water rushed over sandbagged barriers and swamped roads within the airport compound.

The two main carriers based at Don Muang announced they were suspending operations and diverting flights to Suvarnabhumi. They are Thai Orient Airlines and Nok Air, which said it was halting flights until Nov. 1.

Capt. Kantpat Mangalasiri, the airport’s director, said Don Muang’s runways _ though not currently flooded _ would be closed until Nov. 1 to ensure safe aircraft operations.

Thai air force flights carrying relief supplies were continuing on a military runway that is still open, air force spokesman Montol Suchukorn said. He said floodwaters had breached the military’s air base, but the runway remains protected by flood barriers.

Last week, the air force moved 20 planes from Don Muang as a precaution.

The flood relief command will remain at the airport for now since it is still accessible by road, spokesman Wim Rungwattanajinda said.

He said the government expects floodwaters will sweep through the main parts of Don Muang by Friday, but would not rise above 3.3 feet (one meter).

The scene at the domestic terminal was chaotic as throngs of confused passengers struggled to leave or pulled up to the departure hall with luggage, unaware their flights had been canceled.

With parts of the main road heading to downtown Bangkok flooded knee-deep, taxis were in scarce supply. Some travelers waited hours for a ride as airlines scrambled to arrange special buses.

Don Muang, located on Bangkok’s northern outskirts, is among seven of the capital’s 50 districts that the government has declared at risk. Those zones, in the north and northwest, are all experiencing some flooding.

The latest added to the list is the northwestern district of Bang Phlat. Late Monday, Gov. Suhumbhand Paribatra warned residents there to move their belongings to higher ground after water from the Chao Phraya River crept in through a subway construction site.

On Tuesday, Yingluck’s administration declared public holidays on Oct. 27-31 in affected areas, including Bangkok. The Education Ministry also ordered schools in 12 affected provinces and the capital to close until Nov. 7 due to the floods.

Last week, Yingluck ordered key floodgates opened to help drain runoff through urban canals to the sea, but there is great concern that rising tides in the Gulf of Thailand this weekend could slow critical outflows and flood the city.

Late Monday, the flood relief center said water levels in the worst-hit parts of the country _ the submerged provinces north of Bangkok _ were stable or subsiding. But the massive runoff was still bearing down on the capital as it flowed south toward the Gulf of Thailand.

While neighborhoods just across Bangkok’s boundaries are underwater, most of the city is dry and has not been directly affected by the deluge.

Anxious Bangkokians, though, have been raiding stores to stock up on emergency supplies, and many have been protecting their homes and businesses with sandbags. Some have even erected sealed cement barriers across shop fronts.

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