2B z WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2019 z USA TODAY MONEY
Shopping at Target is now more re-
warding – for all shoppers.
Days after shopping at Target.com
and some locations became more mag-
ical because of new Disney stores
opening, the retailer expanded its loyal-
ty program, Target Circle, nationwide.
With the free program, shoppers will
earn 1% on every purchase to redeem on
a future Target trip. They’ll also get such
personalized offers as a birthday dis-
count of 5% and can cast votes to help
direct Target’s giving to approximately
800 nonprofit organizations.
However, shoppers with a Target
RedCard aren’t eligible to earn 1% when
they pay with the store-branded card
but will continue to get 5% off purchases
and can take advantage of the other Tar-
get Circle perks.
Target’s longtime savings tool,
Cartwheel, is now built into Circle and
still has hundreds of discounts daily.
Sara Skirboll, the shopping and
trends expert at RetailMeNot, said the
program is a great way for Target to
compete with Amazon Prime.
“With no membership fee required,
Target shoppers can access these new
benefits, like early access to special
sales and personalized savings, without
any pressure on their wallet,” Skirboll
said.
The Minneapolis-based retailer
worked with actor Will Smith to surprise
shoppers using self-checkout with
jokes, pranks and free gift cards.
How Target Circle works
zSigning up: All shoppers nation-
wide with an existing Target.com, Cart-
wheel or RedCard credit or debit card
were automatically enrolled in Target
Circle. Shoppers also can join by making
a Target.com account or by giving their
phone numbers in a Target store.
zNon-RedCard loyalty members
earn 1% on every Target run to redeem
later. RedCard holders still save 5% off
purchases made with their Target credit
or debit cards.
zEarning rewards: To start accruing
earnings and votes, scan the Wallet bar-
code in the Target app or use your phone
number at checkout in stores, or log in to
their Target.com account when shop-
ping online.
zGiving back: All members earn a
vote per transaction and cast votes to
direct Target’s community giving using
the Target app or Target.com.
zRedeeming rewards: To redeem the
1%, scan the Wallet barcode in the Tar-
get app, give your phone number or log
into your account when shopping on-
line. Earnings cannot be redeemed onsome items including, adult beverage
purchases, dairy product purchases,
prescriptions, Same Day Delivery pur-
chases and gift cards.
zBirthday reward: With a Target
Circle account, you’ll get a reward for
5% off a shopping trip on or near your
birthday. Learn more at
Target.com/Circle.Saving with Circle offersThe Target app, available for Apple
and Android, has hundreds of Circle
offers, formerly known as Cartwheel
offers, from 5% to 50% off in categories
such as groceries, clothes, furniture,
baby products, health, seasonal.
zDownload the app at Target.com
or directly at the Apple or Google Play
app stores. Either create a Target.com
account or log in with an existing ac-
count.
zEveryone can add up to 50 offers
on their Circle account whether they
are a newbie or super saver.
zSearch or browse for deals by cat-
egories or scan item bar codes with the
app. The app also curates personalized
offers based on past purchases. Offers
can be sorted by newest, highest dis-
count, trending deals or by expiring.
zSave offers to your wallet by click-
ing the plus sign. To delete offers, click
on the green check mark.
zMany Circle offers can be re-
deemed on Target Drive Up and in-
store pickup purchases. The offers
note how the offers can be used.
zScanning the main Wallet bar-
code combines Circle offers, store ad
coupons and Target payment options.
RedCard shoppers may have addition-
al coupons in the app and those need
to be scanned before the Wallet.Target’s loyalty program
expands the circle, perks
Kelly Tyko
USA TODAY
Target Circle is now available
nationwide.TARGETThe U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to
not hear Domino’s petition on whether
its website is accessible to disabled peo-
ple is considered a loss for the pizza gi-
ant and a win for disability advocates.
The case was one of a long list of
those the Supreme Court announced it
wouldn’t hear, and made no comment in
declining to take the case. Monday was
the Supreme Court’s first day of argu-
ments after its summer break.
The order to not hear the case keeps
in place a January ruling by the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled
that Domino’s and other retailers must
make its online services accessible.
“Although Domino’s is disappointed
that the Supreme Court will not review
this case, we look forward to presenting
our case at the trial court,” Domino’s
said in a statement posted on its web-
site Monday. “We also remain steadfast
in our belief in the need for federal stan-
dards for everyone to follow in making
their websites and mobile apps accessi-
ble.”
Guillermo Robles, who is blind,
claimed in U.S. District Court in Califor-
nia that the pizza maker violated the
federal disability requirements because
he couldn’t order a pizza on his iPhone:
The website didn’t work with his
screen-reader software.
“In today’s tech-savvy world, blind
and visually-impaired people have the
ability to access websites and mobile
applications using keyboards in con-
junction with screen access software
that vocalizes the visual information
found on a computer screen or displays
the content on a refreshable Braille dis-
play,” the lawsuit argued.
In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled that Domino’s and oth-
er retailers must make its online ser-
vices accessible.
Robles’ attorney, Joe Manning, said
in a statement to CNBCMonday that the
Supreme Court’s decision was “the rightcall on every level.”
“The blind and visually impaired
must have access to websites and apps
to fully and equally participate in mod-
ern society – something nobody dis-
putes,” he said.
Domino’s along with the National
Retail Federation and Retail Litigation
Center urged the Supreme Court to
hear the case because the appeal
court’s ruling “stretched the definition
too far by deciding that websites and
mobile applications must be judged as
public accommodations rather than
just considered as one of many ways in
which a consumer might access a re-
tailer’s offerings.”
According to the pizza company, a
customized pizza can be ordered in-
store, by phone, text, social media and
voice-activated devices like Alexa and
Google Home. Domino’s says it is de-
veloping a proprietary voice-ordering
digital assistant, Dom.
Contributing: Associated Press;
Frank Witsil, Detroit Free PressHigh court won’t hear Domino’s case
Kelly Tyko
USA TODAY
Foundation.
He notes that recent scandals involv-
ing data breaches (Yahoo, Capital One,
Equinox, Facebook) have made people
more concerned about their privacy,
and how Google and Facebook track
their every move, in a bid to sell target-
ed, personalized advertising.
“But when people think about what
Facebook and Google know about them,
it’s not usually connected to workplace
surveillance, except to the extent that
employers might retaliate against them
for what they do in their non-work
lives,” Tien adds.
How they’re tracking us:
zE-mail, text messages and inter-
office communication programs such
as Slack and Microsoft Teams:Kropp
says companies anonymize the data,
and “scrape” it to get a sense of whether
workers are happy at work. They also
look for trends, such as when employ-
ees log in and log out, to get a read on
their time management. Are they
spending too many hours at night re-
sponding to e-mails? “That’s a bad in-
dicator,” says Kropp.
zBiometrics: Some companies have
started using the webcams on laptops to
“track facial expressions,” Kropp says,
“to see if people feel frustrated at work.”
Others have put digital devices under
conference room tables to sense body
temperatures and whether people are
coming in to use the room.
zCalendars: They check the pro-
grams to see who’s meeting with whom.
zMicrochipping:A Wisconsin firm
in 2017 picked up headlines when it
asked employees to let them insert mi-
crochips in their bodies. The firm, Three
Square Market, said it was to make it
easier for employees to get in and out,
without having to scan their badges,
and instead just wave their hands. But
the concept hasn’t caught on. Since
then, only four other firms have offered
microchipping to their workers, and one
of them, a Mexican firm, did it to keep
track of top execs in case they were kid-
napped, “so they would know how to
find them,” says Kropp.
zMovements: In February, co-work-
ing space WeWork bought the startup
Euclid, which tracks the number of peo-
ple who attend company meetings, us-
ing Wi-Fi to monitor them.
“Tracking employees as they go
about their workdays presents obvious
privacy concerns,” noted Betsy Mikel,
content strategist, in the publication
Inc.“Frankly, it’s creepy.”
Kropp says the most popular form of
tracking now is simply monitoring
badge swipes in and out of the building,
followed by when you log in and out to
your work computer and analyzing your
calendar and e-mail activity.In our personal lives, when we go
into a store, everything is being
tracked by marketing firms to better
understand the customer experience,”
Kropp says. “Now it’s coming to the
employee experience.”
But there are simple ways to see
whether your employer or school is
monitoring your iPhone. Apple spells it
outon a help page. In Settings, Gener-
al, on the top of the page it will say,
“This iPhone is supervised and man-
aged by” the organization.
You can go to Settings, General, Pro-
files and Device Management to see
how they are monitoring the phone.
For Android phones, Google allows
organizations to “manage, secure, and
monitor,” activity, even if they’re not
on company-issued devices. But the
employer has to subscribe to Google’s
G Suite enterprise software suite.
Google says it can:
z“Restrict access to device settings
and features, such as mobile net-
works, Wi-Fi, screen captures and
more.
z“Monitor compliance with policies
you set, and get reports about users,
devices and OS versions.”
Discovering that the company has
control of your phone on Android is
tougher than with iOS, but Privacy-
rights.org notes, “You should ask your
employer for more information on the
company policy around managed mo-
bile devices.”Monitoring
Continued from Page 1B
question is just when does the last
plan close down?”
The number of pension plans offer-
ing defined benefits – which means
the payouts are guaranteed – plum-
meted by about 73% from 1986 to 2016,
according to the Department of La-
bor’s Employee Benefits Security Ad-
ministration.
Here are four key reasons why:- Pensions are seen as
expensive, risky
Defined-benefit pension plans are
viewed as expensive and risky to
maintain: Corporations are making
promises to pay out benefits for dec-
ades but may not be able to guarantee
their own financial success for the
same period of time. If they fall on hard
times, pension promises can become
burdensome.
As a result, they have largely shifted
investment risk to individual workers.
Instead of managing investments on
behalf of employees in corporate pen-
sion funds, companies have formed
defined-contribution plans like
401(k)s, which typically require tax-
free withdrawals from paychecks.
If the worker’s money is invested
successfully, the payoff can be lucra-
tive. But if the investments sour or the
market tanks, workers, not the compa-
ny, are on the hook for finding addi-
tional income.
“A pension is a promise to pay
monthly benefits for as long as the em-
ployee lives after retirement,” Munnell
said. “For employers, a system where
they bear all the costs and all the risks
is not appealing.”- Union power has diminished
As private-sector unions have with-
ered, so have private-sector pensions.
Unions have historically championed
defined-benefit pensions for their
members. For example, the United Au-
to Workers union is bargaining for im-
proved pension benefits as it con-
tinues a strike against General Motors.
But the percentage of American pri-
vate-sector workers in a union was
only 6.4% in 2018, compared with
33.9% in the public sector, according to
the Department of Labor’s Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
The nation’s overall unionized rate
of 10.5%, which includes public work-
ers, is down from its all-time high of
20.1% in 1983, the first year compara-
ble BLS figures are available.- 401(k)s have been normalized
A series of tax law changes in recent
decades has enabled the rise of de-
fined-contribution plans like 401(k)s.
Until the 1980s, this was not a nor-
mal employee benefit. Today it is.
More than 100 million people have
401(k)-style benefits, according to the
Department of Labor.
Critics say it’s not enough. The Eco-
nomic Policy Institute says401(k)s are
a “poor substitute” for defined-benefit
pensions, in part because many peo-
ple simply aren’t saving enough and
small businesses are less likely than
large companies to offer them.
But advocates say the defined-con-
tribution approach gives workers more
control over their money and they
point out that defined-benefit pen-
sions are vulnerable to corporate
bankruptcy and mismanagement.
Also, in the modern economy, many
workers prize the ability to move from
company to company, instead of ac-
cruing benefits at a single employer.- Public companies are under
pressure to reduce pension debt
As public companies face pressure
to deliver positive quarterly earnings,
they often seek to improve is their gen-
eral liabilities. That can involve slash-
ing debt to earn a better credit rating,
which typically makes it cheaper to
borrow or win over investors.
When GE announced its pension
moves Monday, analysts welcomed
the plan. “This move shows that GE is
looking to pull any and all levers to re-
store its financial health,” CFRA Re-
search stock analyst Jim Corridore
said in a research note.
The major ratings agencies often
praise companies for reducing their
pension liabilities. Andcorporations
still owe a lot.
The top 100 private plans alone owe
their workers $1.66 trillion, according
to actuarial firm Milliman. In other
words, while most active employees
won’t be getting a pension, the legacy
of America’s pension system will live
on for decades.PensionsContinued from Page 1B