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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (55776)	12/13/2002 11:34:32 AM
From: ALTERN8	Respond to of 57584

Very sad that I have to agree with you. It looks like a Christmas for the records. Too many people will have a nasty Christmas this year. I'm thankful everyday that I have a job as I keep getting news of friends losing theirs. Don't know if Bush can really help the economy next year or not, typically republicans support the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and I'm seeing more of that everyday now. Getting the treatment and the benefits that one deserves is also getting much harder as all companies are looking out only for themselves. I find myself fighting with people on the phone every week about almost all matters these days. Even my mail was stolen recently. I think it's very important to be more assertive in these times otherwise you will be taken advantage of one way or another. Dog eat Dog world!

To: Rande Is who wrote (55776)	12/13/2002 11:35:49 AM
From: Condor	Respond to of 57584

Historically, I've seen some of the biggest weeks of layoffs come just before Christmas. Right you are. Whats with that anyways? Terrible Human relations and very bad PR. C

To: Rande Is who wrote (55776)	12/13/2002 1:02:13 PM
From: westpacific	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 57584

FED and PPT - will deliver an XMAS package, bet on it. Fiat money is at work and will continue to be at work. Always factor this into your trading plan now. They will stop at nothing to keep consumer happy. My call - Santa Claus Rally, thanks to Santa Al and his band of merry elves!

To: Rande Is who wrote (55776)	12/14/2002 4:23:05 PM
From: KevinThompson	Respond to of 57584

"Historically, I've seen some of the biggest weeks of layoffs come just before Christmas." Just a thought, it might have something to do with the companies not wanting to pay holiday benefits to employees they are already planning to remove anyway. It is sad, and I know of a personal example of this happening. Tough for his family, and very difficult to be happy during the Christmas season, knowing the financial difficulties that lie ahead. And in this soft job market, the prospects for improvement are thin. Makes those of us fortunate to have employment and other income that much more thankful and hopefully compassionate towards those suffering financial loss. KevinT

To: Rande Is who wrote (55776)	1/1/2003 10:19:20 AM
From: shadowman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

nytimes.com Out the Door By BOB HERBERT Merry Christmas. Get lost. That, essentially, was the message Robert Pagein received from his employers — make that former employers — at Verizon Communications. Mr. Pagein, who is married and has a year-old son, was a field technician who had worked for the phone company for four years. One of the lures of the job was its stability. The pay wasn't great, but it was steady. If you were disciplined you could pay your bills, take a vacation every year or so, and put a little aside. That's the way it works in theory. In reality, Mr. Pagein was one of 2,400 Verizon workers in New York who were shown the door just a few days before Christmas. Those workers formed the bulk of a pre-holiday wave of terminations that claimed the jobs of 3,500 Verizon employees in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states. Mr. Pagein will not be destitute. His wife is working and he has a college degree. But the cold-blooded way in which he and his fellow workers were lopped off the employment rolls by Verizon, and the phenomenal gap that exists between the compensation available to the company's ordinary workers and the fabulous, multimillion-dollar packages taken home by executives at the top of the Verizon pyramid, has shaken his faith in a system he believed in. "I'm 36 years old and grew up in Lefrak City [Queens]," he said. "As a working-class guy I kind of accepted long ago that I wasn't going to make a fortune or anything like that. What I figured was that if I worked hard, if I became a cop or I joined the phone company or something like that, at least I would have a regular working-class or middle-class life. At least you'd make your 50 grand or 55 grand a year. The government would take out your taxes, but you'd have something left over." Mr. Pagein's comforting belief in a system that looks out for the ordinary worker evaporated with the arrival of his layoff notice. As a not-so-merry Christmas and then a not-so-happy New Year approached, he found himself thinking more and more about the big bucks — the tens of millions of dollars — being pocketed by top Verizon executives like Ivan Seidenberg and Larry Babbio. It's one thing to acknowledge that there are inequities in the system, he said. But it's "really tough" to accept that you can be thrown out of work by executives who take extraordinary sums out of a company whether their business decisions are wise or not. "We were laid off, effective immediately," he said. " `Merry Christmas, thanks for working at ground zero and breathing the dust. . . .' They told us we were heroes and used the pictures of us at ground zero to sell themselves. Now we're out." Last spring Verizon reported a first-quarter loss of $500 million. The company attributed the loss to a tough economy and a $2.5 billion write-down for bad investments. By the third quarter it was reporting earnings of $4.4 billion. But officials said the layoffs, the first in the history of the New York telephone company, were inevitable because the economy is still in trouble and competition is increasing. Company officials said the total compensation in 2001 for Mr. Seidenberg, Verizon's chief executive, was $13.4 million, and for Mr. Babbio, $24 million. Figures released by the Communication Workers of America, which represents the laid-off employees, showed that from 1997 through 2001, Mr. Seidenberg collected more than $56 million in salary, bonuses and stock options, and that Mr. Babbio, the company's vice chairman, collected more than $78 million. Those numbers were on Mr. Pagein's mind as he and his family spent Christmas at his grandmother's home in Flushing. "I kind of Scrooged on the presents," he said, "Everybody knew. It was, like, `Well, don't expect Robert to bring anything because, you know, he just got laid off.' " He added: "It's tough to take. These guys took their outrageous, outrageous bonuses and we're out on the street. I guess you don't notice the inequities so much when you're working because then, at least, you've got something." Mr. Pagein said he would go on unemployment for a while and use that time to look for a different career. "Part of the pain I'm feeling right now has to do with some of the others who were fired." he said. "Some of them were the only income earners in their family. They seem shell shocked."