The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has reversed a lower court decision that had invalidated key parts of executive orders restricting federal workers' union activity. The orders impose greater limits on union representation, expand employers' ability to fire workers and curtail the range of negotiable issues in collective bargaining.

US cities with large populations of workers who possess cognitive and people skills fare better, economically, than cities that have workers who possess only motor, or physical skills, according to a recent study. The analysis looked at how skills affect unemployment rates across the nation and the ability of cities to perform during an economic downturn.

House lawmakers voted 419-6 to approve a bill that would permanently repeal the Affordable Care Act's so-called "Cadillac tax" on high-cost, employer-based health insurance plans, which has not taken effect because it has been repeatedly delayed by Congress. American Health Insurance Plans President and CEO Matt Eyles said repealing the health insurance tax will lower premiums and "significantly improve health care affordability for American workers, businesses and taxpayers."

Set up policies for using people analytics and make sure you have a skilled analytics team and quality data, says David Green, managing director of The People Analytics Program at Insight222. "People analytics offers tremendous potential to organizations to drive business strategy, improve productivity and performance, and personalize and enhance the employee experience," he says.

Whether or not hugging is acceptable varies by industry, region and rank at work, say workplace etiquette experts. They offer alternate ways of expressing warmth if a person's body language signals too much contact is unwelcome.