Labor & Employment

David Campisi joined Big Lots a little more than a year ago as president and CEO and with sales and profits gathering momentum the nation’s leading off-price retailer has decided to begin paying a hefty dividend.

The operator of roughly 1,500 stores nationwide said it would begin paying a quarterly dividend of 17 cents a share as part of a more balanced approach to returning cash to shareholders and as a reflection of confidence in the company’s strategy and favorable long-term prospects.

Mobile marketing and customer relationship management company Mocapay has hired Chris Munz as its director of business development.

“Chris is a welcome and strategic addition to the Mocapay team,” Mocapay CEO Doug Dwyre said. “As Mocapay continues to grow we welcome Chris’ expertise and proven track record of successful marketing strategy planning and implementation as well as an extensive technical understanding of needs of clients.”

Executive authority suffered a blow this week when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Pepsi distributor Noel Canning in a dispute over president Barack Obama’s use of an arcane “recess appointments” clause to load the National Labor Relations Board with pro-union choices.

Dedham, Mass. - Reflexis Systems Inc. today announced the appointment of Brett Friedman as senior VP of global sales and marketing. He will be responsible for expanding the Reflexis global sales team and building upon the company’s growth.

Friedman brings 15 years of sales and marketing experience and joins Reflexis from Infor, where he had global revenue responsibility for supply chain and PLM solutions. Prior to Infor, he was senior VP of global sales at Allegro Development and has also held leadership positions at SAP and i2 Technologies.

Former Walmart CEO Lee Scott is among four new members of board of directors at Yahoo, a company whose CEO Marissa Mayer serves on the Walmart board.

The General Mills board of directors has added Henrietta Fore, CEO of consulting and investment company Holsman International, to its ranks.

Fore currently serves as the chair of Holsman’s board of directors and global co-chair of both WomenCorporateDirectors and Asia Society, and previously oversaw the U.S. Mint and was administrator of U.S. international development.

Fore joins the General Mills board, as current member and former Sprint chief, William Esrey, prepares to leave in September after 25 years.

The Shopko Foundation has announced the recipients of its Shopko Teammate and Family Scholarships for the 2014-2015 school year. The foundation awarded $75,000 in scholarships to 30 students in 9 states.

It’s a common retail scenario: Last year, several sites deployed consistent schedules and set-points and also staged energy-consuming assets into groups that engaged at different times of the day. These executed measures led to significant kWh savings.

Tewksbury, Mass. – Following the dismissal of former president and CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, the board of directors of Demoulas Super Markets Inc. has elected retail executives Felicia Thornton as COO and Jim Gooch as chief administrative officer, and the two will serve as co-CEOs. Both Thornton and Gooch had recently been serving as consultants to the company.

San Francisco – Gap Inc. has reportedly experienced a 10% increase in job applications since its February announcement that it would raise its minimum wage for employees to $10 per hour by 2015. According to Bloomberg, the increase has occurred across all Gap brands, including Banana Republic and Athletica, but has been most pronounced at Old Navy, where applications had previously been declining.