CHICAGO - Now that recreational pot is legal in Illinois, marijuana enthusiasts may feel like it's finally time to emerge from hiding. But people with jobs - or looking for them - might want to stay in the shadows for now as companies figure out how to handle employees who partake. In Illinois, employers are allowed to fire workers who bring cannabis to the office, show up impaired or fail ...

When U-Haul recently announced it will no longer hire people who use nicotine in any form in the 21 states where such hiring policies are legal, the Phoenix-based moving company joined a cadre of companies with nicotine-free hiring policies. U-Haul's announcement is receiving outsize attention because nicotine-free hiring policies are more common at high-profile hospitals such as Cleveland ...

American Airlines has reached a confidential deal with Boeing over the grounding of 737 Max jets for 2019 and will give $30 million back to employees through its profit-sharing distribution in March. The settlement only covers damages that Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines incurred in 2019 because there is no timeline for when the Federal Aviation Administration will clear the Max for ...

A Fresno, Calif., law firm has scored a major victory with a U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding a multi-million-dollar verdict for about 700 Walmart truck drivers. Lawyer Nicolas "Butch" Wagner of Fresno successfully represented the California truck drivers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the mega-retailer nearly a decade ago for short-changing their pay. About 100 of the truck ...

The last two years have witnessed a wave of walkouts, petitions and other workplace actions at video game and tech companies. But despite this swell in labor activism, employees at no major video game studios and only a handful of tech offices have formally voted to form or join a union. A new campaign launched Tuesday by one of the nation's largest labor unions - and spearheaded by one of the ...

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person, said he wants his fellow billionaires to pay much higher taxes. U.S. lawmakers should close loopholes, raise the estate tax and hike the capital-gains tax so that it equals the rate on labor income, Gates wrote Monday in a year-end blog post. He also called for states and local governments to make their taxes "fairer" ...

With boosted sales and orders, conditions for manufacturers in Minnesota and eight other central states crawled back into growth territory in December, nudging up confidence levels after a difficult fall season, a closely watched economic report said. Creighton University's nine-state Mid-America Business Conditions Index rose to 50.6 in December from November's disappointing 48.6, according ...

A man is suing doorbell maker Ring and its parent company, Amazon, after he says a hacker communicated with his children over the internet-connected camera he had bought as "additional security" for his family. In a lawsuit seeking class-action status, John Baker Orange of Alabama said his three kids, ages 7, 9 and 10, were playing basketball when they heard someone comment about their play. ...

Dallas billionaire investor Mark Cuban has denied that the cremation diamond company he backed on ABC's "Shark Tank" in October is a scam, telling Page Six he's a "big believer" in the product. The Austin, Texas-based company Eterneva appeared on Shark Tank in October, promoting a company that would create diamonds from the ashes of customers' loved ones. Cremation has already overtaken burial ...

NEW YORK - Over the past 10 years, Netflix Inc. has led a revolution in the way the world consumes entertainment, and in doing so, it ruled over Wall Street. The shares have soared nearly 4,100% since the end of 2009, a gain that at one point made Netflix a larger company than Walt Disney Co. by market value. No other S&P 500 component has experienced a return that approached anything like ...