With ongoing talks on unions, entitlements, outsourcing etc., I thought these might be of interest
The New York Times, 16 Jan 2008
Blue-Collar Jobs Disappear, Taking Families' Way of Life Along
By Erik Eckholm
Jackson, Ohio - After 30 years at a factory making truck parts, Jeffrey
Evans was earning $14.55 an hour in what he called "one of the better-paying
jobs in the area."
Wearing a Harley-Davidson cap, a bittersweet reminder of crushed dreams, he
recently described how astonished and betrayed he felt when the plant was
shut down in August after a labor dispute. Despite sporadic construction
work, Mr. Evans has seen his income reduced by half.
So he was astonished yet again to find himself, at age 49, selling off his
cherished Harley and most of his apartment furniture and moving in with his
mother.
Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran
workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving
West - these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little
towns and backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of
factories and several coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small
businesses are giving way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets.
Here, where the northern swells of the Appalachians lap the southern fringe
of the Rust Belt, thousands of people who long had tough but sustainable
lives are being wrenched into the working poor.
The region presents an acute example of trends affecting many parts of Ohio,
Michigan and other pockets of the Midwest.
Slammed by the continued decline in the automobile and steel businesses,
Ohio never recovered from the recession of 2001-2, and blue-collar families
who had made it partway up the economic ladder find themselves slipping
back, with chaotic effects on families and dreams.
Throughout the state, the percentage of families living below the poverty
line - just over $20,000 for a family of four last year - rose slightly from
14 percent in 2005 to 16 percent in 2007, one study found. But equally
striking is the rise in younger working families struggling above that line.
The numbers are more dismal in the southeastern Appalachian part of the
state, where 32 percent of families lived below the poverty line in 2007,
according to the study, and 56 percent lived with incomes less than $40,000
for a family of four.
"These younger workers should be the backbone of the economy," said Shiloh
Turner, study director for the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati,
which conducted the surveys. But in parts of Ohio, Ms. Turner said, half or
more "are barely making ends meet."
One consequence is an upending of the traditional pattern, in which
middle-aged children take in an elderly parent. As $15-an-hour factory jobs
are replaced by $7- or $8-an-hour retail jobs, more men in their 30s and 40s
are moving in with their parents or grandparents, said Cheryl Thiessen, the
director of Jackson/Vinton Community Action, which runs medical, fuel and
other aid programs in Jackson and Vinton Counties.
Other unemployed or low-wage workers, some with families, find themselves
staying with one relative after another, Ms. Thiessen said, serially wearing
out their welcome.
"A lot of major employers have left, and the town is drying up," Ms.
Thiessen said of Jackson. "We're starting to lose small shops, too -
Hallmark, the jewelry and shoe stores, the movie theater and most of the
grocery stores."
Shari Joos, 45, a married mother of four boys in nearby Wellston, said, "If
you don't work at Wal-Mart, the only job you can get around here is in fast
food."
Between her husband's factory job and her intermittent work, they made
$30,000 a year in the best of times, Mrs. Joos said. Since last fall, when
her husband was laid off by the Merillat cabinet factory, which downsized to
one shift a day from three, keeping anywhere near that income required Mrs.
Joos to take a second job. She works at a school cafeteria each weekday from
9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m and then drives to Wal-Mart, where she relaxes in her car
before starting her 2-to-10 p.m. shift at the deli counter.
Her 20-year-old son went to college for two years, earning an associate
degree in information science, but cannot find any jobs nearby. He still
works at McDonald's and lives at home as he ponders whether to move to a
distant city, as most local college graduates must. Her 22-year-old son
works at Burger King and lives with his grandparents - "that was his way of
moving out," Mrs. Joos said.
In late December her husband landed a new job, driving a fork lift at a
Wal-Mart distribution center, a shift that ends at 2:30 a.m. It pays a
little less than he used to make and is an hour's drive away, so gasoline
soaks up a painful share of his wages.
"We never see each other," Mrs. Joos, 45, said on a recent morning as she
packed a roast beef and cheese sandwich for her evening meal. "We never even
think of taking a vacation."
Luckily they had paid off their mobile home and an addition they built.
As experienced men in this corner of Ohio have found themselves working for
lower wages, others feel they must move.
"I'm ain't going to work for no $8 an hour!" said Lindsey Webb, 52, who,
like Mr. Evans, was one of hundreds laid off when Meridian Automotive
Systems closed its local plant. On a recent night, Mr. Webb was helping out
in a trailer in front of the old factory, a vigil by the United Steelworkers
Union to remind the company of its obligations to former workers.
Mr. Webb, who worked at the plant for 33 years, made more than $16 an hour
doing machine maintenance. Now he is thinking of moving to Arizona, taking
along his elderly father, whom he helps care for.
Darrel McKenzie, 44, was also a maintenance man at Meridian and grossed more
than $60,000 a year. Now he has restarted at the bottom as a union
pipe-fitting apprentice and expects to make $20,000 this year. His family
just "does less," Mr. McKenzie said.
Mr. Evans said that moving back into the home where he grew up, after
decades of independence, was a stinging reminder that "I lost everything I
worked for all my life."
His mother, Shirley Sheline, 73, had worked 28 years at the same auto parts
plant, and shares his dismay. "Can you believe it, a grown man forced to
move back with his mother," she said.
Seeing his desperation last year, she added a room to her house with a
separate door.
"I don't know what I'd have done without my mom," Mr. Evans said. "At least
I can help her, or if I get back on my feet, she can rent it out."
By contrast, selling his Harley, which he would have paid off this year, was
pure torture. He had owned a Harley since he was 20, and weekend cruising
with pals was his favorite recreation.
"The buyer said he wanted to take it away in the back of a trailer," Mr.
Evans recalled, "and I said, 'That won't happen.' "
"Instead I drove it to his house, threw him the keys, came home and got
drunk."
ww.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/us/16ohio.html
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The Sydney Morning Herald, January 18, 2008
Wall St execs collect $US 33 billion in bonuses
The Wall Street gurus who presided over the subprime mortgage crisis
currently shredding global sharemarkets have awarded themselves bonuses
totalling $US33.2 billion (A$38 billion).
In a concession to the crisis - which has forced America's largest banks to
write off billions in bad investments and raise billions more to shore up
their capital reserves - the bonuses were down nearly 5 per cent on the
previous year.
The average bonus of $US180,420 (A$206,088) in 2007 dipped 4.7 per cent from
the previous year, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a
statement today.
The securities industry rewarded $US33.2 billion in bonuses to its New York
City employees, two per cent less than the record $US33.9 billion (A$38.7
billion) in 2006, he said.
The numbers are taken from the seven largest financial firms headquartered
in New York City, which are tracked by the comptroller's office. The firms
are Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns,
Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
All except Goldman Sachs, which largely avoided the risky loans, have been
battered by the financial crisis.
While the seven firms earned $US39 billion (A$45 billion) in profits during
the first half of 2007, a 41 per cent gain over the prior year, they lost
$US28 billion ($32 billion) in the third and fourth financial quarters,
DiNapoli said.
Total pretax profits for the seven firms totalled $US11 billion (A$12.6
billion) in 2007, less than one-fifth of the $US60 billion (A$68.5 billion)
record set in 2006, the comptroller said.
Employee compensation, which includes bonuses, consumed 61 per cent of the
firms' revenues in 2007, up from 45 per cent 2006. DiNapoli said this
reflected the firms' efforts to keep high-performing employees.
Those working in mergers and acquisitions and in equities should be rewarded
with bigger bonuses but employees in the fixed-income units that handle
mortgages will be "dramatically lower", the comptroller said.
Compensation experts say those high-performing units will basically
subsidise whatever bonuses are left to give to flagging parts of the banks'
business. Because of the dismal performance of the Wall Street investment
houses, Morgan Stanley chief executive John Mack and Bear Stearns chairman
James Cayne gave up their huge annual bonuses.
Last year, they were paid about $US40 million (A$45.7 million) in
compensation.
AP
http://business.smh.com.au/wall-st-e...0118-1mq1.html
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