Under Obama’s proposed budget, which was released on Feb. 1, small employers who begin offering a retirement plan could receive a $1,000 tax credit for three years.

Under the current law, the maximum credit is $500 a year for three years.

The new pension plan startup credit would be effective after Dec. 31, 2011. The increase is meant to work with Obama’s new direct-deposit Individual Retirement Account (IRA) proposal to help employees be more financially secure when they retire.

The IRA plan would require employers who don’t offer a pension plan to implement a direct-deposit IRA and automatically enroll employees in it, unless they opt out. Employers with 10 or fewer workers would be exempt.

In addition, Obama has proposed a tax credit in which the government would match 50% of the first $1,000 of contributions by families that earn up to $65,000 and a partial tax credit to those earning up to $85,000.

In an interesting twist, business leaders and Nashville’s mayor have come out strongly against the proposal, for at least two reasons:

• The county in recent years has managed to convince some foreign-owned companies such as Nissan to move in and hire residents. Business leaders fear that foreign owners will take the vote as a sign that they’re not welcome.
• The county also has a fair number of low-wage jobs that have been filled by legal immigrants who lack English proficiency. The mayor and employers are concerned that immigrants will work elsewhere if forced to communicate solely in English.

The Nashville Metro Council passed a version of an English-only bill in 2007, but the mayor vetoed it — leading to a drive to put the matter to a public vote.

Here are two local views on the measure, one for and one against.

What do you think? Take our poll at the right and let us know.

Site name: GlassDoor.

URL: http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

Who runs it: Sausalito, CA-based GlassDoor

What it provides: At the time we tested the site, it advertised it was in beta, but that will probably change, since the company just announced that it just raised $6.5 million in venture capital — a mere droplet in the sea of venture-capital bucks, but still a good sign that the site is progressing.

Right now, for starters, you can access in-house appraisals of what it’s like to work for many of the major employers in the United States, posted by people who actually work for those companies. The site’s public-relations blurb says the number of companies is 14,000 and rising.  That means if you’re looking for a job or want to know what it’s like at a competitor, you can get the inside scoop.

Other fun stuff that falls into the category of softcore corporate voyeurism: You can look up what insiders have to say about the top people at some of the major firms. For instance, put “Yahoo” in the search box and you’ll get a review of CEO and Director Jerry Yang (who turned down a bazillion-dollar buyout from Microsoft). He gets a 36% approval rating, and the company overall score 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 5. There’s some real nitty-gritty commentary about other companies, too, such as “we hold too many meetings.” Who doesn’t?

OK, here’s the cool part. By clicking on the “Salaries” tab, you can also look at some of those companies and see what they’re paying people like you. Or you can post your salary anonymously, along with some registration information, and see what the range and average is nationwide.

We entered a salary and sought more information, but had to wait a couple of hours after completing the registration before getting the activation e-mail. That could have been because of our e-mail system or the fact that they’re still fine-tuning the in-beta Web site. Sometimes, this stuff happens, but it’ll probably happen less when they start spending that $6.5 million.