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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (62684)	2/23/2013 6:17:12 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Respond to of 71588

If the union members kneaded the dough they should have accepted wage concessions. The government has no business helping out the people responsible for bringing down a baking giant.

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (62684)	3/11/2013 10:31:14 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

False hopes in the new employment numbers Modified: March 10, 2013 at 9:00 pm White House economic adviser Alan Krueger greeted last Friday's employment numbers with optimism, noting that they suggest "the recovery that began in mid-2009 is gaining traction." His sanguine assessment echoes previous Obama administration claims in 2010, 2011 and 2012 that the recovery was just around the corner. Could it finally be for real? To be sure, the report's top line contained signs of hope, such as better-than-expected net job gains and a modest tick downward in the unemployment rate. But this bit of good news was tempered by the fact that more Americans gave up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force last month (296,000) than took new jobs (260,000). And at 63.5 percent, the share of Americans participating in the labor force -- that is, either working or looking for work -- has fallen again to last year's low, which had not been seen since the Carter era. What's more, this ominous trend obscures the labor market's true condition because the unemployment rate goes down every time someone stops trying to find work. Unfortunately, there is worse news than this. One of the most important but least-covered stories of the 2012 election was the labor market depression currently being experienced by Americans between the ages of 25 and 54. These are the Americans in the midst of making something of themselves -- building careers and lives, reaching their peak earning years, forming families, and providing the economy with vitality and innovative thinking. Sadly, this is no longer the case in the Obama era. It was dispiriting enough that 5.2 million Americans aged 25 to 54 lost their jobs in the Great Recession, which ran from December 2007 through June 2009. Far more unsettling is the fact that in the time since -- after three years and nine months of the Obama "recovery," during which millions of lost jobs were restored -- not a single net job has been regained in this age group. In fact, the number of midcareer adults working today is still lower than it was not only in June 2009 but also in May 1997, despite a 20 percent increase in U.S. population over the last 16 years. And the number of Americans in this age group neither working nor seeking work has surged in recent months to a new all-time high, after falling sharply last fall and creating new false hopes. Nearly all of the jobs regained in the Obama recovery have gone to the over-55 age group. The "gray jobs" recovery has emerged through a combination of workers aging and near-retirees hanging on longer than they once did. This suggests that America is losing a generation of workers -- millions with blank years in their resumes that make them less employable. In the long term, their lack of job experience will diminish their value as replacements for the growing number of older and highly experienced workers who will eventually retire. In the longer term, today's lost young adults threaten to become impoverished wards of the state in retirement. This reality underscores the inefficacy of the 2009 stimulus package. If it accomplished anything, it appears only to have allowed employers to hang on to their oldest and most experienced employees. The continued stagnation also demonstrates the need for Obama to put job creation ahead of ideological objectives such as the abolition of coal, the establishment of futile renewable energy projects and tax changes whose primary purpose is to punish someone rather than raise revenue. Stop killing the job market, and it might just come back to life. washingtonexaminer.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (62684)	4/28/2013 9:53:00 AM
From: greatplains_guy	Respond to of 71588

Hostess looking to get back in business, sans the union employees 4:01 pm on April 26, 2013 by Erika Johnsen Last fall, Hostess tried to readjust their struggling business model and keep the company (along with its 19,000-strong workforce) going strong by closing a few factories and downsizing workers’ wages and benefits — and the bakers’ union to which a big chunk of the Hostess workforce belonged didn’t like that all. Their resulting strike turned out to be a suicide mission, however; the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union might have thought they were calling the company’s bluff, but Hostess really could not afford to keep up the bloated pay structure, and the settlement failure meant liquidation and a whole lot of layoffs. Now, a buyout firm is looking to put Hostess’s bankrupt assets back into business; Ed mentioned yesterday that at least one plant should be up and running by July, and they’re planning on re-opening several other plants in short order — but they’re trying to do it without the union contract this time. Via ABC: But last month Apollo Global Management, LLC, and Metropoulos & Co., which owns Pabst Blue Ribbon and Vlasic pickles, bought the 83-year-old company for $410 million, renaming it Hostess Brands LLC. It is planning to re-open four bakeries over the next two and a half months, in Columbus, Ga.; Emporia, Kan.; Schiller Park, Ill.; and Indianapolis. It is also contemplating a fifth in Los Angeles. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, C. Dean Metropoulos, the company’s chief executive, said that between now and September, he plans to inject $60 million in capital investments into the plants, and hopes to hire at least 1,500 workers. … While Metropoulos did not respond to interview requests from ABC News, he told the Journal that he does “not expect to be involved in the union going forward.” … A spokeswoman for the BCTGM did not return phone calls to ABC News. In a March statement, BTCGM president David Durkee said, “We share the enthusiasm, energy and passions exhibited by new ownership, and believe our highly-motivated and skilled workforce will serve as indispensable partners in the seamless re-opening of factories,” he said. But, according to the Journal, Metropoulos and his son, Daren, felt confident that they would be able to hire non-union employees near the new plants. The loss of all of those jobs last year was something of a PR debacle for the unions — one that they could ill afford in these declining days of union membership — and now the company is back on the prowl for more competitive, more attractive non-union hires. True that the new hires could unionize sometime in the future, but as Hostess executive vice president Michael Cramer said on Thursday, “We are not going to invite the unions in. We don’t have to.” The Hostess closing left 18,000 people out of work across the country—with about 5,000 of those union members. Hiring in remodeled plants is underway. … “The Hostess strike will be a lasting image and not for the good of unions,” said Marc Bloch, a labor and employment lawyer at Walter & Haverfield. “I think any management team will hold up a photo to its workers of Hostess strikers and say, ‘What’s a union going to do for you?”’ Bloch said. “The case can be made that they did nothing.” … Only 14.3 million of all workers in the U.S. currently belong to unions, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—just 11.3 percent of the total workforce. That’s the lowest rate in 70 years. The peak for union workers was a 35 percent rate during the mid-1950s, after a surge in unionization during the Great Depression through post-World War II. hotair.com