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Thanks to the popularity of famous tidying-up guru Marie Kondo's Netflix show Tidying Up, a number of businesses — from Goodwill to online resellers like thredUP and Poshmark — say they're seeing boosts as Americans seek to slim down their wardrobes in the quest to spark joy.

In January, Kondo followed up her best-selling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up with the release of a reality series on Netflix. That show has provided further inspiration to clean out the closet. Or at least, that's what the numbers posted by resellers and their anecdotal evidence conclude.

"The Marie Kondo effect is definitely having a moment," a representative for online resale marketplace Poshmark told TIME, reporting a 64% increase in listings compared to 2018. Similarly, thredUP saw a huge shift: they shared with TIME an 80% uptick in orders of their "clean out" bags, where users can deposit whatever they don't want to keep around and send back to the company, which helps list and sell on your behalf. They also had a nearly 50% increase in site traffic after the first of the year when the Kondo show premiered, and in a survey of over 1,000 customers, more than 60% reported that Kondo's Netflix show was an inspiration for their cleaning.

"Everybody has sort of gotten on the bandwagon, and all sites are benefitting," thredUP CEO James Reinhart noted to Yahoo! Finance earlier this year.

At brick-and-mortar stores, the changes are also noticeable. A Goodwill representative told PEOPLE donations were up as much as 30% year-over-year in some markets in the month of January. Buffalo Exchange, another popular storefront, told TIME that winter is normally a "quiet season for us until spring cleaning kicks in." But that's not at all the case this year, as stores are putting out additional racks to accommodate a 20-30% increase in inventory.

"A large majority of newer sellers and many of our regulars attribute their motivation to the Tidying Up show," a representative told TIME. "A few years ago, with the book's release, we also saw a new wave of sellers coming in. We're really excited for the movement. It's introducing many people to resale fashion and the process of recycling their clothing."

Good luck keeping those closets clean.

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February 28, 2019 at 08:15PM

As Walmart moves to phase out its familiar blue-vested "greeters" at some 1,000 stores nationwide, disabled workers who fill many of those jobs say they're being ill-treated by a chain that styles itself as community-minded and inclusive.

Walmart told greeters around the country last week that their positions would be eliminated on April 26 in favor of an expanded, more physically demanding "customer host" role. To qualify, they will need to be able to lift 25-pound (11-kilogram) packages, climb ladders and stand for long periods.

That came as a heavy blow to greeters with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other physical disabilities. For them, a job at Walmart has provided needed income, served as a source of pride and offered a connection to the community.

Now Walmart, America's largest private employer, is facing a backlash as customers rally around some of the chain's most highly visible employees.

Walmart says it is striving to place greeters in other jobs at the company, but workers with disabilities are worried.

Donny Fagnano, 56, who has worked at Walmart for more than 21 years, said he cried when a manager at the store in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, called him into the office last week and told him his job was going away.

"I like working," he said. "It's better than sitting at home."

Fagnano, who has spina bifida, said he was offered a severance package. He hopes to stay on at Walmart and clean bathrooms instead.

Walmart greeters have been around for decades, allowing the retail giant to put a friendly face at the front of its stores. Then, in 2016, Walmart began replacing greeters with hosts, adding responsibilities that include helping with returns, checking receipts to deter shoplifters and keeping the front of the store clean. Walmart and other chains have been redefining roles at stores as they compete with Amazon.

The effect of the greeter phase-out on disabled and elderly employees — who have traditionally gravitated toward the role as one they were well-suited to doing — largely escaped public notice until last week, when Walmart launched a second round of cuts.

As word spread, first on social media and then in local and national news outlets, outraged customers began calling Walmart to complain. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions. Facebook groups sprang up with names like "Team Adam" and "Save Lesley." A second-grade class in California wrote letters to Walmart's CEO on behalf of Adam Catlin, a disabled greeter in Pennsylvania whose mother had written an impassioned Facebook post about his plight. Walmart said it has offered another job to Catlin.

In Galena, Illinois, hundreds of customers plan to attend an "appreciation parade" for Ashley Powell on her last day of work as a greeter.

"I love it, and I think I've touched a lot of people," said Powell, 34, who has an intellectual disability.

In Vancouver, Washington, John Combs, 42, who has cerebral palsy, was devastated and then angered by his impending job loss. It had taken his family five years to find him a job he could do, and he loved the work, coming up with nicknames for all his co-workers.

"What am I going to do, just sit here on my butt all day in this house? That's all I'm going to do?" Combs asked his sister and guardian, Rachel Wasser. "I do my job. I didn't do anything wrong."

Wasser urged the retailer to "give these people a fair shake. … If you want to make your actions match your words, do it. Don't be a wolf in sheep's clothing."

With the U.S. unemployment rate for disabled people more than twice that for workers without disabilities, Walmart has long been seen as a destination for people like Combs. Advocacy groups worry the company is backsliding.

"It's the messaging that concerns me," said Gabrielle Sedor, chief operations officer at ANCOR, a trade group representing service providers. "Given that Walmart is such an international leader in the retail space, I'm concerned this decision might suggest to some people that the bottom line of the company is more important to the company than inclusive communities. We don't think those two are mutually exclusive."

The greeter issue has already prompted at least three complaints to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as a federal lawsuit in Utah alleging discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under the federal law, employers must provide "reasonable" accommodations to workers with disabilities.

Walmart did not disclose how many disabled greeters could lose their jobs. The company said that after it made the change at more than 1,000 stores in 2016, 80 to 85 percent of all affected greeters found other roles at Walmart. It did not reveal how many of them were disabled.

This time, Walmart initially told greeters they would have 60 days to land other jobs at the company. Amid the uproar, the company has extended the deadline indefinitely for greeters with disabilities.

"We recognize that our associates with physical disabilities face a unique situation," Walmart spokesman Justin Rushing said in a statement. The extra time, he said, will give Walmart a chance to explore how to accommodate such employees.

Walmart said it has already made offers to some greeters, including those with physical disabilities, and expects to continue doing so in the coming weeks.

But some workers say they have been tacitly discouraged from applying for other jobs.

Mitchell Hartzell, 31, a full-time Walmart greeter in Hazel Green, Alabama, said his manager told him "they pretty much didn't have anything in that store for me to do" after his job winds down in April. He said he persisted, approaching several assistant managers to ask about openings, and found out about a vacant position at self-checkout. But it had already been promised to a greeter who doesn't use a wheelchair, he said.

"It seems like they don't want us anymore," said Hartzell, who has cerebral palsy.

Jay Melton, 40, who has worked as a greeter in Marion, North Carolina, for nearly 17 years, loves church, Tar Heels basketball and Walmart. His sister-in-law, Jamie Melton, said the job is what gets him out of bed.

"He doesn't have a lot of things he does himself that bring him joy," she said. Addressing Walmart, Melton added: "When you cut a huge population of people out, and you have written a policy that declares they are no longer capable of doing what they have been doing, that is discrimination."

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February 27, 2019 at 08:15PM

Many of the country's biggest companies are preventing Americans from getting their day in court.

Eighty-one of the 100 largest companies in the U.S. have policies that bar customers from bringing claims of wrongdoing in front of a judge or a jury, according to a new study published in the University of California Davis Law Review on Wednesday.

That means that millions of consumers who interact with companies such as Amazon, Apple, Walmart, CVS, Best Buy and Coca-Cola cannot sue these corporate giants over anything, from fraud or personal injury to harassment or discrimination. A full 78 of these 100 companies also prevent consumers from banding together in a class action if they feel they've been wronged.

Customers typically agree to this when they sign (or click to "accept") a company's terms and conditions, but people often have no idea what they're doing. Hidden in the middle of these long terms and conditions documents are policies known as arbitration agreements. When people accept an arbitration agreement, they are generally giving up any right to bring a civil lawsuit against the company at any time.

"Arbitration agreements make it harder to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing," says Imre Szalai, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and author of the new study. "It destroys our consumer rights."

Arbitration is a private process that does not involve courts, judges or juries. There is no requirement to follow the same procedures that lawyers would in court, and there is no real appeals process, meaning the arbitrator's decision is almost always final. There is also virtually no government oversight.

Companies who use arbitration say that it is efficient and cost-effective. From their perspective, this is helpful — studies have shown that very few consumers win in arbitration, and that when they do, they often get much less money than they would in court. Critics argue that arbitration takes power away from the consumer, and that its secretive nature makes it difficult to challenge companies' bad behavior.

"The publicity makes a big difference. If it's public what Amazon is doing, that can have a shaming effect, a deterrent effect," says Szalai. "But if all these disputes are being heard in private arbitration, you lose some of those values from a public proceeding in court."

With the large number of companies now using this tactic, Szalai estimates that more than 826 million individual consumer arbitration agreements exist in the U.S., more than two and a half times the country's population. A majority of households are subject to these agreements, according to the study.

Szalai took his list of companies from the Fortune 100, and examined which companies have used arbitration agreements in connection with customers since 2010. Given how many of the largest retail companies use these agreements, the study found that at least a majority of online sales in the U.S. are now covered by arbitration agreements.

Arbitration has received increased attention over the last year or so as various tech companies have come under fire for imposing these policies on their employees and on consumers in cases of sexual assault. Last May, Uber and Lyft said they would stop requiring victims of sexual assault and harassment to pursue claims through arbitration, and in December those companies each saw pushback from thousands of drivers claiming the company prevented them from suing and then refused to pay the required fees to start their arbitration cases.

A slew of companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Airbnb and eBay also announced last fall that they were ending their policies requiring employees to handle sexual harassment claims through arbitration. Just this month Google ended forced arbitration for all its employees.

But even as companies are starting to feel pressure to let their workers take disputes to court, this has largely not extended to their dealings with customers. Progress on the issue has been slow in Congress. Grassroots pressure like what Uber and Lyft faced may start to make a difference, Szalai says, but for now, millions of Americans have unknowingly given up their rights to publicly pursue claims against many of the companies they interact with on a daily basis.

"Every one of our rights are at risk if they're being sent to these secret tribunals," Szalai says. "All of your rights become meaningless if you can't enforce them. And these tribunals are designed so you don't have robust enforcement."

(WASHINGTON) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday cleared AT&T's takeover of Time Warner, rejecting the Trump administration's claims that the $81 billion deal will harm consumers and reduce competition in the TV industry.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington came in the high-stakes competition case, approving one of the biggest media marriages ever. It was already completed last spring, soon after a federal trial judge approved it. AT&T, a wireless carrier and TV and home internet provider, absorbed Time Warner, the owner of CNN, HBO, the Warner Bros. movie studio, "Game of Thrones," sports programming and other shows.

Many observers had expected the decision favorable to AT&T from the three-judge appeals court panel. The decision was unanimous to uphold the trial judge's June ruling. Opposing the merger forced the Justice Department to argue against standing legal doctrine that favors mergers among companies that don't compete directly with each other, what's known as a vertical merger.

The U.S. antitrust lawsuit against Dallas-based AT&T marked the first time in decades that the government has challenged that doctrine by suing to block a vertical merger.

The appeals court judges said U.S. District Judge Richard Leon was correct to dismiss the government's argument that AT&T's takeover of Time Warner would hurt competition, limit choices and jack up prices for consumers to watch TV and movies.

"The government failed to meet its burden of proof" for its theory that costs for Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting content would increase after the merger, mainly through threats of programming "blackouts," the judges wrote. The Turner networks include CNN.

The Justice Department antitrust attorneys had asserted that Leon misunderstood the complexities of the TV industry and the nature of AT&T's competitors.

The idea behind the merger was to help AT&T — which claims about 25 million of the 90 million U.S. households that are pay TV customers — compete better with online rivals like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu.

AT&T already had a streaming service, DirecTV Now, but it launched a cheaper offering called WatchTV soon after the deal closed. It's planning another streaming service, "WarnerMedia," for later this year.

"The merger of these innovative companies has already yielded significant consumer benefits, and it will continue to do so for years to come," AT&T General Counsel David McAtee said in a statement. "While we respect the important role that the U.S. Department of Justice plays in the merger review process, we trust that today's (decision) will end this litigation."

The ruling dealt a major setback to the Trump Justice Department. If the government decided to appeal the ruling, the next step likely would be the Supreme Court, and it wasn't clear whether Justice planned to do so.

There's about a 50 percent chance of the government taking it to the high court — and scant prospects of it winning there, said Matthew Cantor, an attorney focusing on telecom antitrust matters at Constantine Cannon in New York.

The Justice Department appears committed to pursuing the long-shot bid against the merger, rather than considering conditions that could have been imposed on AT&T by the trial court to make the deal more acceptable. The head of Justice's antitrust division, Makan Delrahim, doesn't like merger conditions requiring regulators to keep an eye on the combined company's conduct for years after.

But politics and presidential influence also could be a factor, Cantor suggested. When the deal was first made public in October 2016, it drew fire from then-candidate Donald Trump, who promised to kill it "because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few." Trump as president has publicly feuded with Time Warner's CNN, calling it "failing" and a purveyor of "fake news," and suspending one of its correspondents from the White House.

"It seems to me that political considerations played into this," Cantor said. "It's odd that the Justice Department has gone after this merger as its principal merger case. … This was a very tough case. It's very hard to challenge a vertical merger."

The case could affect future antitrust regulation. It underscores that the government should look at vertical mergers more critically, particularly when the companies combining are already in industries that have few competitors, said Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute.

There has been a rush of deal-making in the cable, entertainment and telecom industries over the last few years, and Leon's ruling opened the doors for more efforts.

Just a day after his decision, Comcast jumped back into a bidding war with Disney for most of 21st Century Fox's TV and movie businesses. Disney eventually won, and Comcast bought British broadcaster Sky instead.

In other deal activity, wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile also are attempting to combine. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are still reviewing that deal, which is not a vertical merger. Sprint and T-Mobile are direct competitors.

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February 26, 2019 at 08:15PM