Business

For many full-time employees in the United States, the five-day work week, paid overtime and holidays are expected benefits. This wasn't always so, and many workers' benefits today are the achievements of labor unions.

Just five decades ago, unions were on the frontline of the fight for the rights and wages of the middle class. But today, unions are on the decline.

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Former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta was found guilty today of conspiracy and securities fraud. Prosecutors had accused Gupta of passing on inside information about the firm to hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.

JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: The verdict came on only the second day of deliberations. Gupta was acquitted of two charges but convicted of four others. The 63-year-old Indian-born Gupta is the most prominent business leader convicted so far in the government's ongoing insider trading investigation.

The German bank Sparkasse Chemnitz recently launched a Karl Marx credit card. The bank let people vote online for 10 different images, and Marx was the "very clear winner," beating out a palace, a castle and a racetrack, among others. Reuters has more on the story.

"Rajat Gupta, who reached the pinnacle of corporate America as managing partner of McKinsey & Co. and was a director at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Procter & Gamble, was convicted by a federal jury of leaking inside information to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam," Bloomberg News writes.

The Associated Press recaps the case:

All eyes these days are trained on the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to rule sometime this month on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act.

But some people are waiting more anxiously for the court to rule than others. Among them are those with a major financial stake in whether the law goes forward or not and if so, in what form.

The European Central Bank "is on standby to keep banks flush with liquidity" if Greeks effectively vote on Sunday to support politicians who want to reject austerity measures and pull the nation out of the eurozone, The Financial Times writes this morning.

The ECB joins "a global chorus of central bankers pledging support ahead of Sunday's elections," the FT adds.

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NPR's business news starts with a new owner for Yammer.

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GREENE: Yammer, the social networking company has agreed to sell itself to Microsoft for $1.2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Yammer is often called Facebook for the workplace. Co-workers can use it to share files, message one another and organize meetings and events.

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And coming to the end of a tumultuous week of global economic news, we're seeing rising shares Asia, plus the euro coming close to a three-week high.

As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, markets are encouraged by reports that the world's central banks have come up with a plan to try to calm panic in the eurozone.

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Our last word in business today is dot free for all.

The group that governs Internet names is allowing for more top-level domain names - that's the technical term for endings like dot-com and dot-net. Nearly 2,000 applications poured in from companies hoping to grab domain name endings like dot-app, dot-eat and dot-baby.

Google went all out, spending more than $18 million to apply for the rights to obvious endings like dot-google and dot-goog. But Google also applied to own dot-love. Hmm.

In recent months, economic growth in China has not only slowed — it's slowed faster than most people expected. Last week, for the first time since the depths of the global financial crisis, the government actually cut lending rates to try to spur growth. All of this has people wondering: Where is the world's star economy headed?

In the car business, Lincoln once stood as the pinnacle of luxury. Frank Sinatra drove a Lincoln. So did the Shah of Iran. In the U.S., the presidential limo was a Lincoln.

The brand peaked with the 1961 Lincoln Continental, a beautiful, innovative car that stood for style, individuality and sophistication.

But after the '60s, Lincoln started on a long, slow decline that mirrored the slide of the American auto industry.

As car companies struggle to meet growing demand, the third shift is making a comeback. But many factories running on three shifts are doing it differently from in the past. And that new "three crew" shift pattern could make what's normally a hard job even harder.

At Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, employees work 10-hour shifts four days a week. The so-called A crew gets days, while the B crew gets afternoons. But the C crew shift rotates its start time every week. On Fridays and Saturdays, workers start at 6:00 a.m. On Mondays and Tuesdays, they start at 4:30 p.m.