For weeks, Congressman Paul Ryan has been praised for being innovative, responsible and even courageous for his analysis of the nation's fiscal problems.
Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman has a more critical view writing that the Ryan's Roadmap wouldn't balance the budget, but would provide a windfall to the wealthiest Americans while privatizing Social Security. We've seen these kind of Robin Hood of the Rich policies before and they are hardly courageous. They might not help main street, but they are sure to please Goldman Sachs.
Krugman writes:
Naturally, Ryan’s response to these revelations has been a hissy fit. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — which has always, in my experience, been impeccably honest and careful in its work — does the point by point rebuttal.
But I’d like to follow up on small but revealing point: Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security You see, there’s a history here.
Back when the Cato Institute first began pushing for individual Social Security accounts, it called its push, well, The Project on Social Security Privatization. As the Bush administration got ready to make its privatization push, however, it became clear that “privatization” polled badly. So the project was renamed The Project on Social Security Choice. And Republicans began bristling at any suggestions that they were proposing privatization, calling that a slander. Really.
Wait, it gets better. Cato engaged in Orwellian tactics — deleting the term “privatization” from older web posts and even from records of old conferences. But they were sloppy; there were traces of the true history throughout. I don’t know if they’re still continuing the practice.
In any case, Ryan’s attempt to deny that what his own movement used to call privatization is, in fact, privatization should settle the question of his sincerity.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Proposal to remove Grant dishonors America
In an instructive essay, Sean Wilentz, the celebrated American historian, writes :
...the proposal to substitute his (Ronald Reagan's) image for that of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill is a travesty that would dishonor the nation’s bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality — and damage its historical identity. ...
As president, Grant...fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead...
Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.
...the proposal to substitute his (Ronald Reagan's) image for that of Ulysses S. Grant on the $50 bill is a travesty that would dishonor the nation’s bedrock principles of union, freedom and equality — and damage its historical identity. ...
As president, Grant...fought hard and successfully for ratification of the 15th Amendment, banning disenfranchisement on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. When recalcitrant Southern whites fought back under the white hoods and robes of the Ku Klux Klan, murdering and terrorizing blacks and their political supporters, Grant secured legislation that empowered him to unleash federal force. By 1872, the Klan was effectively dead...
Without question, his was the most impressive record on civil rights and equality of any president from Lincoln to Lyndon B. Johnson.
Robert Rubin Should Be Doing Hard Labor: Instead He's Trying to Resurrect Himself
Dean Baker, an economist who in 2002 warned that a dangerous housing bubble was developing, writes:
As Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin put in place all the pieces that set up the economy for the disaster that we are now living through. He pushed legislation that weakened regulation of the financial sector; he cheered on a stock bubble that eventually grew to $10 trillion and he established an over-valued dollar as a matter of official policy.
He then left to take a top job at Citigroup where he was able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He earned well over $100 million in the decade after he left the Clinton administration. In the fall of 2008, when Citigroup was saved from bankruptcy with a taxpayer bailout, Rubin quietly slipped out the back door (with his money), resigning from his position at Citigroup.
It may not seem just that someone like Rubin would be allowed to live out his life in luxury after the policies that he promoted and personally profited from led to so much suffering for so many people. But that is the way things work in the United States these days.
However, what is even more infuriating is that he doesn't seem to have any intention of going away. He is still pontificating on the economy and desperately trying to rewrite history to exonerate himself.
The column is linked.
As Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin put in place all the pieces that set up the economy for the disaster that we are now living through. He pushed legislation that weakened regulation of the financial sector; he cheered on a stock bubble that eventually grew to $10 trillion and he established an over-valued dollar as a matter of official policy.
He then left to take a top job at Citigroup where he was able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He earned well over $100 million in the decade after he left the Clinton administration. In the fall of 2008, when Citigroup was saved from bankruptcy with a taxpayer bailout, Rubin quietly slipped out the back door (with his money), resigning from his position at Citigroup.
It may not seem just that someone like Rubin would be allowed to live out his life in luxury after the policies that he promoted and personally profited from led to so much suffering for so many people. But that is the way things work in the United States these days.
However, what is even more infuriating is that he doesn't seem to have any intention of going away. He is still pontificating on the economy and desperately trying to rewrite history to exonerate himself.
The column is linked.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Who will clean up after Corinthian College?
A month ago, the Milwaukee Board of Zoning Appeals (BOZA) approved a zoning variance that allows Corinthian College, a diploma mill with a notorious record of exploiting students, to establish operations directly across the street from Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and on the doorstep of the Hillside Housing Project.
The change was opposed by a broad coalition including the Hillside Residents Council, Millele Coggs, the area's alderwomen, five other aldermen, the NAACP, Voces del la Frontera, MATC's Latino Student Organization, Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods, and the American Federation of Teachers Local 212.
After a critical article and skeptical editorial appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Senetinel, Corithian hired Milwaukee PR flak Evan Zeppos to make its case. Zeppos enlisted the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce's Tim Sheeehy. Sheehy's support was apparently all that was need to convince the MJS editorial board to support Corinthian. In a particularly cynical editorial, the editorial board urged BOZA to support Corinthian's efforts as a simple "land use issue"..."that could provide a boost to development in the adjacent Park East Corridor."
It cautioned; "...the school must guard against being seen as an institution that preys on rather then helps young urban students..."
The editorial board's position is inane because Corinthian's problem is not about perception or public relations. It is an institution that PREYS on young urban students. It's student default rate is is 250% of the national average for all higher education institutions, and 140% of the national average 3-Year Student Loan Default Rate at for-profit institutions.
These startling results are the direct result of Corinthian's record of manipulating and exploiting students that has generated lawsuits, negative publicity and investigations including a recent $6.5 million settlement with the state of California. Its business plan is based on luring low income people to take out guaranteed federal loans that they have no reasonable chance of repaying.
In a recent call with investors and analysts, Corinthian Colleges, Inc. said it fully expects a shocking 56 to 58 percent of the borrowers to default. Yet they consider these loans good investments because they will increase enrollment and with it a profitable flow of federal grant and loan dollars that outweighs the planned writeoff.
[
While several other Alderman vocally opposed the development, the Department of City Development (DCD) originally championed it and the Mayor failed to use his influence to derail it. When the final vote was taken several members of BOZA cited the city's support for the development as the reason for their affirmative vote.
Corinthian is in the sub-prime student loan business. It preys on students dreams for a better life and leaves them with nothing but mountains of debt. That is why the investor magazine Barron's, described Corinthian as a "high-pressure sales operations bent on vacuuming up student-loan dollars."
It is unconscionable that the Milwaukee top elected officials are assisting an unsavory business with as dismal a record as Corinthian's.
Whatever happened to their responsibility to serve and protect the public?
Is DCD really so desperate for investment that they will support any development no matter how exploitative?
On Sunday, the New York Times exposed Corinthian and other for-profit colleges. Peter Goodman wrote:
Their ...profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students...Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.
“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.” these schools have exploited the recession as a lucrative recruiting device while tapping a larger pool of federal student aid."
Wyotech, a Corinthian's subsidiary,is highlighted in the article: "
Jeffrey West was working at a pet store near Philadelphia, earning about $8 an hour, when he saw advertisements for training programs offered by WyoTech, a chain of trade schools owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., a publicly traded company that last year reported revenue of $1.3 billion.
After Mr. West called the school, an admissions representative drove to his house to sell him on classes in auto body refinishing and upholstering technology, a nine-month program that cost about $30,000.
Mr. West blanched at the tuition, he recalled, but the representative assured him the program amounted to an antidote to hard economic times.
“They said they had a very high placement rate, somewhere around 90 percent,” he said. “That was one of the key factors that caused me to go there. They said I would be earning $50,000 to $70,000 a year.”
Some 14 months after he completed the program, Mr. West, 21, has failed to find an automotive job. He is working for $12 an hour weatherizing foreclosed houses.
With loan payments reaching $600 a month, he is working six and seven days a week to keep up.
“I’ve got $30,000 in student loans, and I really don’t have much to show for it,” he said. “It’s really frustrating when you’re trying to better yourself and you wind up back at Square One.”
Corinthian is coming to Milwaukee to prey on Milwaukee's urban students at the invitation of a local developer and with the apparent blessing of DCD, the Mayor's office and the Journal Sentinel editorial board.
The change was opposed by a broad coalition including the Hillside Residents Council, Millele Coggs, the area's alderwomen, five other aldermen, the NAACP, Voces del la Frontera, MATC's Latino Student Organization, Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods, and the American Federation of Teachers Local 212.
After a critical article and skeptical editorial appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Senetinel, Corithian hired Milwaukee PR flak Evan Zeppos to make its case. Zeppos enlisted the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce's Tim Sheeehy. Sheehy's support was apparently all that was need to convince the MJS editorial board to support Corinthian. In a particularly cynical editorial, the editorial board urged BOZA to support Corinthian's efforts as a simple "land use issue"..."that could provide a boost to development in the adjacent Park East Corridor."
It cautioned; "...the school must guard against being seen as an institution that preys on rather then helps young urban students..."
The editorial board's position is inane because Corinthian's problem is not about perception or public relations. It is an institution that PREYS on young urban students. It's student default rate is is 250% of the national average for all higher education institutions, and 140% of the national average 3-Year Student Loan Default Rate at for-profit institutions.
These startling results are the direct result of Corinthian's record of manipulating and exploiting students that has generated lawsuits, negative publicity and investigations including a recent $6.5 million settlement with the state of California. Its business plan is based on luring low income people to take out guaranteed federal loans that they have no reasonable chance of repaying.
In a recent call with investors and analysts, Corinthian Colleges, Inc. said it fully expects a shocking 56 to 58 percent of the borrowers to default. Yet they consider these loans good investments because they will increase enrollment and with it a profitable flow of federal grant and loan dollars that outweighs the planned writeoff.
[
While several other Alderman vocally opposed the development, the Department of City Development (DCD) originally championed it and the Mayor failed to use his influence to derail it. When the final vote was taken several members of BOZA cited the city's support for the development as the reason for their affirmative vote.
Corinthian is in the sub-prime student loan business. It preys on students dreams for a better life and leaves them with nothing but mountains of debt. That is why the investor magazine Barron's, described Corinthian as a "high-pressure sales operations bent on vacuuming up student-loan dollars."
It is unconscionable that the Milwaukee top elected officials are assisting an unsavory business with as dismal a record as Corinthian's.
Whatever happened to their responsibility to serve and protect the public?
Is DCD really so desperate for investment that they will support any development no matter how exploitative?
On Sunday, the New York Times exposed Corinthian and other for-profit colleges. Peter Goodman wrote:
Their ...profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students...Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.
“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.” these schools have exploited the recession as a lucrative recruiting device while tapping a larger pool of federal student aid."
Wyotech, a Corinthian's subsidiary,is highlighted in the article: "
Jeffrey West was working at a pet store near Philadelphia, earning about $8 an hour, when he saw advertisements for training programs offered by WyoTech, a chain of trade schools owned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., a publicly traded company that last year reported revenue of $1.3 billion.
After Mr. West called the school, an admissions representative drove to his house to sell him on classes in auto body refinishing and upholstering technology, a nine-month program that cost about $30,000.
Mr. West blanched at the tuition, he recalled, but the representative assured him the program amounted to an antidote to hard economic times.
“They said they had a very high placement rate, somewhere around 90 percent,” he said. “That was one of the key factors that caused me to go there. They said I would be earning $50,000 to $70,000 a year.”
Some 14 months after he completed the program, Mr. West, 21, has failed to find an automotive job. He is working for $12 an hour weatherizing foreclosed houses.
With loan payments reaching $600 a month, he is working six and seven days a week to keep up.
“I’ve got $30,000 in student loans, and I really don’t have much to show for it,” he said. “It’s really frustrating when you’re trying to better yourself and you wind up back at Square One.”
Corinthian is coming to Milwaukee to prey on Milwaukee's urban students at the invitation of a local developer and with the apparent blessing of DCD, the Mayor's office and the Journal Sentinel editorial board.
When their ex-students end up with broken dreams and mountains of debt will City Hall and the Journal Sentinel editorial Board be there to help pick up the pieces?
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wisconsin's unemployed need jobs!
The nation lost another 36,000 jobs last month bringing the total job loss to 8.4 million jobs since the recession began. More than 15 million Americans are officially unemployed!
Forty percent of the unemployed have been without work for more than six months. If we include those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment and those who have given up looking for work (discouraged workers) 29 million (16.8%) are either unemployed or unemployed. And that's only part of the story.
We are short another 2.7 million jobs, positions that are needed to absorb the 100,000 workers entering the labor market every month.
Last week Republican Senator Jim Bunning, who lost his fastball years ago, held up 100,000 Americans' unemployment checks because he claimed to be concerned about the growing federal deficit.
And Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, defended Bunning arguing unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
There are more than six unemployed workers for every job opening and the number of long- term unemployed is greater than at any time since the Great Depression. Yet Kyl feigns concern that extending unemployment benefits discourages people from working. This is truly amazing!
Republicans like Bunning and Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan, and moderate Democrats helped create the nation's river of red ink by supporting President Bush's $1.8 trillion high income tax cuts and the trillion dollar invasion of Iraq. Now they in the name of fiscal responsibility they want to ignore the more pressing 11.1 million jobs deficit. To fill that hole, while keeping up with a growing work force, requires the creation of more than 400,000 new jobs a month for three years — wildly in excess of even the most optimistic projections.
America's working people and their families are hurting and no one in Washington DC or Madison seem to be listening.
Congress is working on a very modest bill that will provide tax credits, at best an ineffective form of stimulus, to businesses that hire new workers. But as Milwaukee's Congresswoman Gwen Moore said when she voted against the bill:
I’ve talked with employers and small business owners in Milwaukee, and they resoundingly told me that the tax credits in this bill will not help them hire new people. What they need are customers – customers with money to spend. And customers need jobs.
Job creating legislation needs to be targeted to areas with persistent unemployment like we have in Milwaukee, and I’ve been advocating to make sure that we focus on the areas that need it most. This bill does exactly the opposite.
I am working with my colleagues to make sure that no one forgets about the folks in communities where unemployment is more than double the national average.
A jobs bill needs to actually create jobs.
The nation needs a real jobs bill that includes an extension of unemployment benefits which account for only 0.07% of the GDP and direct aid to state and local governments. Extending unemployment benefits is not only the right thing to do for people who are unemployed through not fault of their own, but it is one of the best forms of economic stimulus because the money will be immediately spent. Without increased federal aid to the states and local governments, they will be forced to slash their spending and lay-off even more workers, including firefighters, police officers, other first responders and teachers, further depressing consumption and private sector growth driven by government purchases.
The Wisconsin Legislature has also done very little to address the state's job gap. At a minimum it ought to help low-wage and part-time workers by passing an increase in the state's minimum wage which it has been sitting on for over a year.
A jobs bill should, as Moore said, create jobs. There is important work that needs to be done in this country, rebuilding the deteriorating infrastructure of roads, bridges, levees, parks, urban water system, and schools, and there are unemployed workers who want to work! Public investments like these would not only put people back to work, but lay the basis for long term economic growth. What are our elected officials waiting for?
When politicians say they are focused on jobs, jobs, jobs they should mean more than their own.
Forty percent of the unemployed have been without work for more than six months. If we include those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment and those who have given up looking for work (discouraged workers) 29 million (16.8%) are either unemployed or unemployed. And that's only part of the story.
We are short another 2.7 million jobs, positions that are needed to absorb the 100,000 workers entering the labor market every month.
Last week Republican Senator Jim Bunning, who lost his fastball years ago, held up 100,000 Americans' unemployment checks because he claimed to be concerned about the growing federal deficit.
And Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, defended Bunning arguing unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
There are more than six unemployed workers for every job opening and the number of long- term unemployed is greater than at any time since the Great Depression. Yet Kyl feigns concern that extending unemployment benefits discourages people from working. This is truly amazing!
Republicans like Bunning and Wisconsin's own Paul Ryan, and moderate Democrats helped create the nation's river of red ink by supporting President Bush's $1.8 trillion high income tax cuts and the trillion dollar invasion of Iraq. Now they in the name of fiscal responsibility they want to ignore the more pressing 11.1 million jobs deficit. To fill that hole, while keeping up with a growing work force, requires the creation of more than 400,000 new jobs a month for three years — wildly in excess of even the most optimistic projections.
America's working people and their families are hurting and no one in Washington DC or Madison seem to be listening.
Congress is working on a very modest bill that will provide tax credits, at best an ineffective form of stimulus, to businesses that hire new workers. But as Milwaukee's Congresswoman Gwen Moore said when she voted against the bill:
I’ve talked with employers and small business owners in Milwaukee, and they resoundingly told me that the tax credits in this bill will not help them hire new people. What they need are customers – customers with money to spend. And customers need jobs.
Job creating legislation needs to be targeted to areas with persistent unemployment like we have in Milwaukee, and I’ve been advocating to make sure that we focus on the areas that need it most. This bill does exactly the opposite.
I am working with my colleagues to make sure that no one forgets about the folks in communities where unemployment is more than double the national average.
A jobs bill needs to actually create jobs.
The nation needs a real jobs bill that includes an extension of unemployment benefits which account for only 0.07% of the GDP and direct aid to state and local governments. Extending unemployment benefits is not only the right thing to do for people who are unemployed through not fault of their own, but it is one of the best forms of economic stimulus because the money will be immediately spent. Without increased federal aid to the states and local governments, they will be forced to slash their spending and lay-off even more workers, including firefighters, police officers, other first responders and teachers, further depressing consumption and private sector growth driven by government purchases.
The Wisconsin Legislature has also done very little to address the state's job gap. At a minimum it ought to help low-wage and part-time workers by passing an increase in the state's minimum wage which it has been sitting on for over a year.
A jobs bill should, as Moore said, create jobs. There is important work that needs to be done in this country, rebuilding the deteriorating infrastructure of roads, bridges, levees, parks, urban water system, and schools, and there are unemployed workers who want to work! Public investments like these would not only put people back to work, but lay the basis for long term economic growth. What are our elected officials waiting for?
When politicians say they are focused on jobs, jobs, jobs they should mean more than their own.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Sensationalism Misses Real Story
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel circulation must really be down, or its editors have a pathological hatred of the American Recovery and Reinvestemnt Act.
There are no other possible explanations for its sensationalist, above the fold, front page article about the failure of the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and four other stimulus fund recipients to meet a reporting deadline.
That’s right, the Journal Sentinel thought missing a deadline merited front page and distorted coverage. Sure, MATC’s administration needs to tighten up its reporting procedures, but its failure to meet a deadline on money it has not even received hardly constitutes front page news.
Here’s how distorted the reporting was: the Journal Sentinel first said five organizations received a grand total of two hundred thousand dollars. But after acknowledging that amount, the paper quoted the chairman of the Federal Recovery Board claiming: “…they took millions and thumbed their noses at the taxpayers.”
If only MATC had received millions of federal dollars, it wouldn’t be struggling to meet the huge increase in demand for its services.
The real scandal that merits front page coverage is that MATC’s enrollments have soared as Iraqi veterans and dislocated workers seek occupational training, but state aid to the tech college system has fallen to 13%, the lowest level in history and way below the state’s 33% commitment.
And while President Obama has proposed a significant increase in federal support for two-year colleges, Congress has yet to approve the needed funding while the GOP appears committed to opposing absolutely everything Obama wants.
Rather than manufacturing imaginary scandals, the Journal Sentinel should use its bully pulpit to demand that the federal government increase its investments in higher education.
The local newspaper apparently has an axe to grind with the stimulus program. A month ago in a front page article entitled "Economists see no stimulus jobs" it incorrectly claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had not created any jobs, an assertion that virtually no economist agrees with. Now it implies that the program is acting irresponsibly.
The only institution that is behaving irresponsibly is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which in its desperate effort to increase sales, has, in the words of Steven Colbert, a truthiness problem.
There are no other possible explanations for its sensationalist, above the fold, front page article about the failure of the Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC) and four other stimulus fund recipients to meet a reporting deadline.
That’s right, the Journal Sentinel thought missing a deadline merited front page and distorted coverage. Sure, MATC’s administration needs to tighten up its reporting procedures, but its failure to meet a deadline on money it has not even received hardly constitutes front page news.
Here’s how distorted the reporting was: the Journal Sentinel first said five organizations received a grand total of two hundred thousand dollars. But after acknowledging that amount, the paper quoted the chairman of the Federal Recovery Board claiming: “…they took millions and thumbed their noses at the taxpayers.”
If only MATC had received millions of federal dollars, it wouldn’t be struggling to meet the huge increase in demand for its services.
The real scandal that merits front page coverage is that MATC’s enrollments have soared as Iraqi veterans and dislocated workers seek occupational training, but state aid to the tech college system has fallen to 13%, the lowest level in history and way below the state’s 33% commitment.
And while President Obama has proposed a significant increase in federal support for two-year colleges, Congress has yet to approve the needed funding while the GOP appears committed to opposing absolutely everything Obama wants.
Rather than manufacturing imaginary scandals, the Journal Sentinel should use its bully pulpit to demand that the federal government increase its investments in higher education.
The local newspaper apparently has an axe to grind with the stimulus program. A month ago in a front page article entitled "Economists see no stimulus jobs" it incorrectly claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had not created any jobs, an assertion that virtually no economist agrees with. Now it implies that the program is acting irresponsibly.
The only institution that is behaving irresponsibly is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel which in its desperate effort to increase sales, has, in the words of Steven Colbert, a truthiness problem.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Wall Street Values Rock Mercury Marine
The year before the Great Recession, Mercury Marine and its union settled on a new contract indicating that their business model, including the negotiated wage and benefit structure, worked.
Once the recession hit, the demand for Mercury's discretionary product, outboard motors, plummeted.
In past recessions when sales declined, firms laid off their hourly employees until demand picked up. The national unemployment compensation system is designed precisely for such circumstances. It provides the unemployed worker with a weekly check and saves companies money by ensuring their skilled and experienced labor force will return when the economy begins to grow again.
Mercury cynically used the Great Recession to restructure its labor costs and externalize its costs.
It whipsawed the Fond du Lac plant against an offer from right-to-work Oklahoma demanding concessions including a 40% wage cut. The local union that represents the hourly employees initially stood up to Mercury's naked money grab, but under pressure from community and political leaders eventually agreed to the significant concessions.
Mercury's threat to relocate also got the state, Fond du Lac County and the City of Fond du Lac to pony up almost $125 million, $50 million of which will be generated by an increase in the county's sale tax.
Now Mercury Marine is handing out bonuses to all its non-union folks. The Wall Street ethos has come to Main Street.
As union president Mark Zillges says: "Fifty years worth of benefits they took away from these people in one swoop. Now they give themselves bonuses. That's the biggest slap to these people there is...This is not right. It's not right for these people to get rich off the sweat of these other people who just lost it."
For more check out this video: www.620wtmj.com/news/local/84748697.html
Once the recession hit, the demand for Mercury's discretionary product, outboard motors, plummeted.
In past recessions when sales declined, firms laid off their hourly employees until demand picked up. The national unemployment compensation system is designed precisely for such circumstances. It provides the unemployed worker with a weekly check and saves companies money by ensuring their skilled and experienced labor force will return when the economy begins to grow again.
Mercury cynically used the Great Recession to restructure its labor costs and externalize its costs.
It whipsawed the Fond du Lac plant against an offer from right-to-work Oklahoma demanding concessions including a 40% wage cut. The local union that represents the hourly employees initially stood up to Mercury's naked money grab, but under pressure from community and political leaders eventually agreed to the significant concessions.
Mercury's threat to relocate also got the state, Fond du Lac County and the City of Fond du Lac to pony up almost $125 million, $50 million of which will be generated by an increase in the county's sale tax.
Now Mercury Marine is handing out bonuses to all its non-union folks. The Wall Street ethos has come to Main Street.
As union president Mark Zillges says: "Fifty years worth of benefits they took away from these people in one swoop. Now they give themselves bonuses. That's the biggest slap to these people there is...This is not right. It's not right for these people to get rich off the sweat of these other people who just lost it."
For more check out this video: www.620wtmj.com/news/local/84748697.html
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