The US senate has approved legislation to prohibit employers from using genetic information to discriminate against individuals.

The latest novelty among US employers destined not to catch on in the UK is the practice of employers allowing parents to bring their babies to work.

There is something of an air of relief hanging over Jaguar and Land Rover this week following their sale to India’s Tata Group.

Although Unite-TGWU’s Tony Woodley was somewhat lacking in enthusiasm, commenting that he would rather Ford had kept the car makers “in the family”, he did admit that if a sale had to take place then “Tata was the best option”.

European HR departments – and that includes those in the UK – are facing renewed criticism for their alleged failure to take as active a role in workforce management issues as their counterparts in Asia and the Americas.

According to computer giant IBM, the HR function in Europe takes an advisory role in business transformation efforts rather than working as a proactive contributor of time and resources. It says HR on this side of the Atlantic remains a supporter rather than a driver of change, with decisions often based on relationships rather than hard facts.

The prospect of an international trade union merger between Unite in the UK and the United Steel Workers in the US appears to be coming closer.

The Georgia Senate yesterday passed a bill that will allow some workers in the southern US state to keep a firearm in a car parked in a company car park, regardless of the wishes of their employers.

"There are eight million stories in the city, and this is one of them" goes the voiceover as the camera pans across a New York skyline. The face of Harvey Keitel fills the screen. But without a script, Keitel is speechless.

So too are Sean Penn, Kate Beckinsale, Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Minnie Driver (pictured here), Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and – thankfully – the cast of Ugly Betty.

They are among the Hollywood A listers who have signed up to a project in support of the Writers Guild of America, which is currently locked in a bitter industrial dispute over payment for DVD and digital rights.

When UK employers were banned from discriminating against employees on the grounds of sexual orientation three years ago, the reaction from all concerned was generally positive and opposition muted.

The BBC reports that almost 13,000 nurses in Finland are threatening to resign in a pay dispute. A union claim for a 24% rise over 28 months has been met by an employer offer of 12%, which the nurses' union argues will leave its members struggling to survive.

It is now around 5.30pm, and the organisers of the virtual picket of IBM in Second Life are delighted with how it has worked out – albeit that the company has apparently decided to keep a low profile.

See our report from this morning on the start of the protest and the background to it.

This is how a picket line would be if the actors from an American soap walked out. The men are tanned and toned, torsos rippling rather than wobbling as is traditional; the women straight out of a casting director’s contacts book, just right for the “girl next door” part.

With Take Your Dog To Work Day taking place on 14 September and a cat called Sybil taking up residence in Downing Street, there’s never been a more pertinent time to ask: are pets at work ever a good idea?

Forget Facebook. An Italian trade union is taking all this Web 2.0 stuff much further and organising industrial action inside Second Life. It is even promising to put avatars on picket lines inside the virtual world.

Euro buzzwords, no. 749: Flexicurity

It's probably a good thing that the news that the European Commission formally adopted a paper on "flexicurity" on Wednesday was ignored in the UK, where the floods and the small matter of a change of prime minister took precedence.

If the Commission's latest attempt to promote a debate on labour market reform and the European social model had been reported in the UK, no doubt most attention would have focused on the word itself: "flexicurity" - an ugly neologism if ever there was one, destined to join "subsidiarity" in the list of Euro buzzwords that plain-speaking, no-nonsense Brits (me included) love to hate.

Eight out of ten American workers are satisfied in their current jobs, the Society for Human Resource Management reported this week. For the record, this is very similar to European workers' job satisfaction levels (subscription required).

But unfortunately for the SHRM, which hopes to use its annual conference in Las Vegas to promote the idea that HR practitioners are clued-up, hard-nosed professionals, the findings tend to indicate that its members don’t really have a clue what’s going on.

British workers tend to come relatively low down the international holiday entitlements league tables, even taking account of current plans to increase the statutory minimum from 20 to 28 days' paid leave.

But while counting down the days to this year's summer holiday, spare a thought for your American counterparts. US employers are notoriously stingy with the holidays; according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com, just 25% of Americans have four weeks' or more paid leave, while 30% get less than a fortnight. One in eight (12%) get no paid leave at all.

As if that's not bad enough, the Society for Human Resource Management (the US equivalent of the CIPD) reports that Americans are increasingly abandoning their two-week summer holiday for a series of extended weekend breaks (PDF format 412KB).

A report from the Sector Skills Development Agency shows that Britain's productivity levels are falling well behind Europe and the US (PDF format, 1.97MB). Apparently, the difference is stark when per hour or per worker measures of productivity are considered and varies widely according to sector.

The Sector Skills Almanac 2007 reveals that while the UK's employment rate is the fourth highest in Europe and some sectors are more productive than their EU and US equivalents, the UK's overall productivity levels are 21% behind the US and 8% lower than Europe.

Where would we be without our boundless sense of enthusiasm about work and gratitude for our generous pay and conditions? France, apparently.

According to a survey of 14,000 employees (PDF 64KB) by market research company FDS International, workers in the UK are second only to the French in "a league table of worldwide workplace whingers".

The findings are based on factors such as the percentage of workers unhappy with their pay, actual income relative to cost of living, percentage of workers who feel work impinges on their private life, and average weekly working hours.

According to the report, titled What workers want: a worldwide study of attitudes to work and work-life balance,

"Workers in the UK come second overall, alongside Sweden, in our global 'demanding workers' league table. As with the US, it is relatively high levels of dissatisfaction with pay despite what is, in global terms, a very good standard of living, that accounts for this."

Those expecting France's new centre-right president to ram through Thatcherite labour market reforms to create a flexible employment culture on the anglo-saxon model may be in for a disappointment.

Reuters reports today that Sarkozy's campaign chief of staff Claude Gueant has played down talk of strife with France's trade unions.

Gueant is a key player in the Sarkozy camp and is expected to take the role of the new president's chief of staff.

According to Reuters, he told French television that "Nicolas Sarkozy has no intention at all of ramming things through . . . He has clearly said that he would consult the social partners (unions and employers' groups) to work out the modalities of a dialogue that will take place in September."

So the French "social partners" are going to work out the "modalities of a dialogue".

hmmm, that doesn't really sound very much like a Thatcherite call to arms against over-powerful trade unions - or the "enemy within" as Mrs T used to call them.

Some news from overseas: now that the Democrats have control of both houses of the US Congress, American employers can look forward to a swathe of new employment legislation. Although there is no real appetite to tackle gun ownership, and several US states even have laws forbidding employers from preventing their employees arriving for work fully armed, this could mean new discrimination legislation.

At the end of last month, Democrats and liberal Republicans introduced legislation which would outlaw discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation in employment on a nationwide basis. Some states already have their own laws on this issue, but most do not. Success in getting the Act through Congress would leave the US with something remarkably similar to the UK Regulations on sexual orientation.

The need for such legislation in the US was highlighted a few weeks ago when Steve Stanton was fired as city manager (think local authority chief executive but with more power) of Largo in Florida. Stanton was sacked from his US$140,000-a-year job when, to the horror of the local council, he announced that he was undergoing gender reassignment and planned to change his name to Susan.

This being America, Stanton went on the Larry King television show to set out his side of the story. Although both sides are sticking to their guns, if that is not an unfortunate analogy in any story about the US, it looks as though there will be no court case to help keep the story running. Meanwhile, Stanton has been shortlisted for a similar job in another, presumably more tolerant, town.

Back on the wider political stage, supporters of the new anti-discrimination legislation may have to more fast. The next set of national elections take place in 2008, and without George Bush in the White House to drag down their poll ratings, there is every chance that the Republicans could take Congress back from the Democrats.