Pay Rises Modestly, Inflation Fears Fall
The government has announced that the pay and benefits of U.S. workers rose moderately in the third quarter of 1999, calming fears that interest rates would jump in the months ahead. The Labor Department said its Employment Cost Index, the broadest measure of what U.S. employers pay their workers in wages, salaries and benefits, rose by 0.8%. That gain is below the 0.9 % increase for the period forecast by economists.

Health Premiums Rise
Employees' health premiums rose an average of 4.8% between the spring of 1998 and the spring of 1999, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The jump is the biggest annual increase in five years -- double the economy-wide inflation rate of 2.1%. Employees' choice of health insurance plans remained stable, however, with 65% of workers getting a choice of two or more plans.

The Tax Man Comes After Waiters
The Internal Revenue Service says it will stop auditing restaurants that try to comply with tax laws about reporting their waitstaff's tips. Instead, the IRS is focusing on tracking down individual restaurant employees who don't report their tips. Restaurateurs are breathing a sigh of relief, but IRS officials admit that it will be much more difficult to focus on individual tax scofflaws.

Shaky Consensus on Workplace Privacy
A joint survey of human resource professionals and job seekers has found that the two groups agree on some issues of workplace privacy. Employers should have the right to monitor employees' Web activities said 78% of HR staffers and 62% of job seekers. But 65% of HR pros gave a thumbs-up to employer monitoring of worker email, compared with only 51% of job seekers.