Free Republic

Goodyear's plant manager placed its bad-news call to City Hall at 7:58 a.m. Thursday: The Union City plant where 1,900 employees make radial tires will close by year's end. "We were just all surprised, I guess," City Clerk Carolyn Moran said, adding most everyone in this border town of 10,200 knows someone who works at the plant four miles north of City Hall. Union City sits at the Kentucky line, 115 miles northeast of Memphis. The area unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. Goodyear's fourth-quarter earnings report, released Thursday, disclosed the Akron, Ohio-based company will take a one-time $160 million charge...

Of all of the promises that America’s elites—from academia to the higher echelons of government—make to American youth, none may be quite so suspect as the promise of a greener future, in every sense of the word, if the young will only train for jobs of a similar hue. At a recent Center for American Progress (CAP) conference, U. S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis touted her agency’s training programs for such positions. “I’ve never seen so much assistance available,” gushed the former congressional representative. She doesn’t mention the private sector jobs lost when the government goes full speed ahead...

FCC Act would stop federal takeover of the Internet, prevent job losses, protect consumer choice, and promote free market competition. WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) joined Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), Orrin Hatch (R- Utah), John Ensign (R-Nevada), John Thune (R- South Dakota), Tom Coburn (R- Oklahoma), and Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) in introducing the Freedom for Consumer Choice Act (FCC Act). This legislation, based on language from Sen. DeMint’s 2005 Digital Age Communications Act (DACA), is intended to institute needed, market-based reforms to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) rulemaking authority. Senator Cornyn said, “This bill protects...

It's clear to me when looking at the monthly unemployment figures that the jobless rates climbed the month the Democratic Presidential candidate was announced. 2008-05-01 5.4 2008-06-01 5.5 2008-07-01 5.8 2008-08-01 6.1 2008-09-01 6.2 2008-10-01 6.6 2008-11-01 6.9 2008-12-01 7.4 2009-01-01 7.7 2009-02-01 8.2 2009-03-01 8.6 2009-04-01 8.9 2009-05-01 9.4 2009-06-01 9.5 2009-07-01 9.4 2009-08-01 9.7 2009-09-01 9.8 2009-10-01 10.1 2009-11-01 10.0 2009-12-01 10.0 2010-01-01 9.7 2010-02-01 9.7 2010-03-01 9.7 2010-04-01 9.9 2010-05-01 9.7 2010-06-01 9.5

As part of the White House Forum for Workplace Flexibility, the CEA released a report today presenting an economic perspective on flexible workplace policies and practices. Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility (pdf) highlights changes in American society over the past half century, including the increased number of women entering the labor force, the prevalence of families where all adults work, increasing eldercare responsibilities, and the rising importance of continuing education. These changes are among those that have increased the need for flexibility in the workplace. This increased need can be met with flexibility in terms of when...

Employees at the NUMMI plant work on the last Toyota Tacoma truck to come... Employees at the NUMMI plant get a look the last Toyota Tacoma truck to... FREMONT, Calif. (AP) - The last car has rolled off the production lines at California's sole auto plant. Workers are trickling out of the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont as they complete their tasks and the plant readies to shut down. Nearby, job centers have been set up to help the newly unemployed figure out benefits, retraining and other options. The plant made Toyota Tacoma trucks and Corolla sedans. The...

You think Obama has been a nightmare? You ain't seen nothing yet. That was just the previews. Have you seen the commercials yet for people who have maxed out their credit cards, have loans over ten thousand that they can't pay back, urging them to apply for stimulus dollars? It's enough to make you puke. For those who played by the rules, worked hard, did the right thing -- you're screwed, the man has you and your wallet and your kids' wallet by the throat. Welcome to the era of the degenerate -- they will be sucking your blood and...

How to stop them? Generate Huge Opposition and GROW it by dissemination! We are pleased to say that about 16 health freedom and consumer groups have followed our lead and taken p this battle. That is wonderful. Our momentum and leadership are what you, and the other groups, rely on. Our numbers are what the decision-makers respond to ...http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/cat=4

...In his first public comments since the release of President Barack Obama's proposed NASA budget last week, Mike Coats said the space center will have to find new missions besides the International Space Station to replace the waning space shuttle program and the seemingly doomed Constellation program... Of the 17,000 civil servants and contractors who are funded through Johnson Space Center's programs, 7,000 work under the shuttle and Constellation programs. ...Obama's proposed wholesale cancellation of Constellation — NASA's next-generation exploration program that entailed development of rockets to carry humans to orbit, the moon and beyond as well as a versatile...

Feb. 4, 2010, 10:45 a.m. EST Massive revision will show recession was even worse More than 8 million jobs lost since 2007, updated Labor data will show Friday By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- On Friday, the government's official data on U.S. employment will be updated to reflect what everyone already feels: In terms of job losses, this has been the worst recession since the end of the World War II more than 60 years ago. Instead of job losses of 7.2 million as currently reported, it'll be more like 8.1 million lost jobs, if the annual benchmark revision...

SHREWSBURY — Charles River Laboratories International Inc., which conducts research for drug developers, will suspend operations at its Shrewsbury facility and lay off 300 workers by mid-2010 because of weak demand for the company's preclinical services, Charles River reported yesterday. The company, based in Wilmington, said it expects to retain about 30 workers who will handle ongoing operations at the plant or take jobs at other Charles River sites. Charles River said it expects the move will cut operating costs by about $20 million this year. The company has no plans at this time to dispose of the plant, said...

Reporters omit failure of stimulus, problems counting jobs created or saved from many jobs stories. The national unemployment rate rests at 10 percent after 85,000 more jobs were lost in December, while the number of people too discouraged to look for work increased by 642,000. CNBC’s Steve Liesman called those figures “absolutely devastating.” Yet the network news media refused to hold President Barack Obama responsible for the losses since the jobs release Jan. 8. Obama has been in office for a full year and made a number of “extravagant” promises regarding job growth, yet network news reports remained uncritical with...

What is the connection between Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the Indian railway engineer who has been much in evidence at the Copenhagen climate conference, as chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and an Indian-owned steel company's decision to mothball its giant Teesside steel works next month, ripping the heart out of the town of Redcar by putting 1,700 people out of work? Nothing of this complex story is likely to be heard in the dreary concrete shed outside Copenhagen where, as temperatures drop towards freezing, 17,000 prime ministers, officials and climate activists are earnestly discussing how the planet...

On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN in which he issued a dire warning regarding the United Nations Climate Change Treaty which is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009. .. Video 4:11 min

former Republican congressional budget chief called the Obama administration’s claims to fiscal responsibility “hypocritical” and “laughable,” noting in particular the mounting unemployment numbers (9.8 percent nationwide) despite the $787-billion stimulus plan enacted in February that he said was poorly designed.

The Ugly Job Loss Chart Keeps Getting Uglier John Carney|Oct. 2, 2009, 5:10 PM | 1,538 |9 Catherine Rampell at Economix has updated this miserable chart, showing job losses in this recession compared to recent ones (expressed as a percentage of peak employment). The dark blue line that just keeps heading down represents current recession. Since the official start of the recession in December 2007, the economy has had a net loss of about 5.2 percent of its nonfarm payroll jobs. The horizontal axis measures the number of months since the recession started. The vertical axis measures the share of...

"The level of unemployment is unacceptably high. And will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years." Who do you suppose said that? A Republican political operative? A Fox News political analyst? One of those several hundred thousand Tea Partiers who assembled in Washington on Sept. 12? No, it was Lawrence Summers, the director of Barack Obama's National Economic Council and, by common consent, one of the world's leading economists Summers made this gloomy forecast in the course of arguing that our economy is headed to "sustained recovery." And while it sounds like self-protective political rhetoric, it...

A freeze in consumer spending, abysmal same-store sales, and a swath of retail bankruptcies have taken a serious toll on your local mall. Nationwide, mall vacancy rates hover at 8.4%, their highest level since commercial real estate research firm REIS started collecting the data almost a decade ago. To keep their storefronts full, mall operators are starting to get creative when it comes to their definition of a tenant.

Do We Really Need A Green Job Czar? The Spanish government's renewable energy initiatives have destroyed 2.2 jobs for every new "green" job created, concludes a new study by economics professor Gabriel Calzada of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. Calzada says American jobs will suffer the same fate if the United States similarly attempts to promote renewable energy at the expense of conventional energy sources.

Childhood Obesity Report Calls For Government Regulations to Limit Access to ‘Unhealthy’ Restaurant Chains Wednesday, September 02, 2009 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - A newly released report by the Institute for Medicine and the National Research Council details strategies for local governments to combat what it calls an epidemic of childhood obesity, including enacting zoning and land-use regulations that would “restrict fast food establishments near school grounds and public playgrounds.” The report, “Local Government Actions to Prevent Childhood Obesity,” was compiled by the Committee on Childhood Obesity Prevention Actions for Local Governments, a committee of health care...

Climate Change: Channeling King Canute, G-8 leaders agree to wreck the world's economy, and ours, by pledging to prevent temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees by 2050. What if the Earth has other plans?Canute was the legendary king whose sycophantic followers praised his power and wisdom. He was The One of his time. He once stood on the shore and commanded the waves to halt. As the story goes, he was exercising his ego when in fact he was giving his followers a dose of reality — the power of man over nature is finite and inconsequential. We were...

The KEY sentence, of this Story is... "The new equipment requires fewer people to operate, making it more cost-effective in the long run, TSA officials say."

I'll start. I lost my job as a controls engineer when the factory I worked at cut production by about 70%. Luckily I had another job within a couple of weeks. Date of loss: 3/31/09 New job: 4/27/09

Computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard Co. will cut 2 percent of its employees, about 6,400 people, to save money.

The economic crisis, which has claimed more than 5 million jobs since the recession began, did not strike the entire country at once. A map of employment gains or losses by county tells the story of how those job losses first struck in the most vulnerable regions and then spread rapidly to the rest of the country. As early as August 2007, for example—several months before the recession officially began—jobs were already on the decline in southwest Florida; Orange County, Calif.; much of New Jersey; and Detroit, while other areas of the country remained on the uptick. Using the Labor...

Check here every day for new additions http://geo.craigslist.org/ http://www.monster.com/ http://www.indeed.com/ http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ http://www.careerbuilder.com/ http://www.dice.com/ http://www.jobbankusa.com/ http://www.vault.com/ http://www.job.com/

As our economy experiences one of its most dramatic downturns in decades, the American worker is bearing much of the pain. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.1 million people joined the ranks of the unemployed in the last year. That brought the national unemployment rate up to 7.6 percent -- and of course that number is much higher in many parts of the country. If you're one of the people who has lost their job --or whose job is in jeopardy -- the key is to take action. Here are some things you can do to...

Today, the United States is expected to formally approve a new "open skies" aviation trade deal with the European Union (EU). The Bush administration has failed to satisfy congressional critics who question the pact's impact on long-standing law and policy limiting foreign control of our airlines. And aviation workers are deeply concerned that this agreement is a down payment on a broader Bush administration strategy to allow foreign control of our airlines and decision making that threatens thousands of American jobs. This is not hyperbole. Led by Transportation Committee Chairman Rep. James Oberstar, key House members in both parties wrote...

Bob Casey aired an ad today that states that in the last five years, Pennsylvania lost 180,000 jobs. http://www.bobcasey.com/multimedia/video/14.aspx But hey, Ed Rendell says that in the last four years, he's added 133,000 jobs. http://rendellforgovernor.com/pdfs/econdev.pdf Either someone is lying, or someone is incredibly stupid.

Everybody looks for a scapegoat. You would think that Americans who have lost jobs in the past year or so would be more likely to want to blame ...well, China. Everything else that goes on is blamed on China, right? But that is not the case. 52% of the general public thinks that severe job loss is due to China. Only 4% more of those who lost jobs this past year blame it on China. (56%) 33% of the public thinks moderate job loss is due to China. Compare to that 27% of those who lost jobs last year who...

HUGE TRADE DEFICITS AND LOSS OF MANUFACTURING JOBS GO HAND IN HAND Danielle DiMartino has another excellent column in today’s News entitled "Trade deficit pressures our economy." Click here (registration required). What I found particularly interesting was her quotes from Dallasite Richard Fisher in a speech he gave this week. Fisher is the Dallas Federal Reserve President and former Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Texas. Here is what Fisher had to say about our trade deficit:

No Fidelity to Hub: Up to 1,500 employees to exitBy Scott Van Voorhis and Jay Fitzgerald Friday, January 6, 2006 - Updated: 12:14 AM EST The Hub’s battered job base buckled yesterday, with Fidelity Investments confirming plans to export jobs to Rhode Island in a move that could pull as many as 1,500 workers out of downtown Boston.       The move by one of Boston’s oldest and largest employers, first reported in yesterday’s Herald, will eventually send 800 workers to a new building in the works on Fidelity’s growing, Smithfield, R.I., campus. In the meantime, 400 of those workers...

Detroit, Michigan — Massive job cuts at General Motors, America's largest carmaker — coupled with the bankruptcy of Delphi, America's biggest autoparts maker — have provoked predictable handwringing from liberal pundits who worry that America is "losing its manufacturing base." But the wrenching change now buffeting the auto industry defies the usual press formulas. Just listen to Steve Miller a turnaround specialist who is steering Delphi's restructuring process. He exploded the myth of America's "endangered" union manufacturing jobs at his October press conference announcing Delphi's move into Chapter 11: "We cannot continue to pay $65 an hour for someone to...

Concerned over the critical shortage of math and science faculty in the United States, global IT major IBM has announced a programme that encourages employees to take up the teaching profession. The world's largest Information Technology company said on Friday that it would reimburse participants in its new transition to teaching programme up to $15,000 for tuition and stipends. Participants will also be able to remain at IBM while they conduct course work and training, the company said. "Many of our experienced employees have math and science backgrounds and have made it clear that when they are ready to leave...

Calcutta's famous hand-pulled rickshaws will soon be banned, according to the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal. The rickshaws had long been considered "inhuman" and did not exist anywhere else, Buddhadev Bhattacharya said. The rickshaw, immortalised as a living symbol of Calcutta in films such as City of Joy, will be phased out in four to five months. The hand-pulled rickshaw came from China in the 19th century. Mr Bhattacharya said: "We have taken a policy decision to take the hand-drawn rickshaw off the roads of Calcutta on humanitarian grounds. "Nowhere else in the world does this...

Excerpts: BANGALORE, India, Aug. 9 - This summer, Omar Maldonado and Erik Simonsen, both students at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, did something different. ...most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India's biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice. ...but the sophistication of the work being done in Copal's Gurgaon office contrasts with the chaotic city outside. Mr. Simonsen said he was amazed. "I came expecting to see number-crunching and spreadsheet type of work; I didn't expect American banks to farm out intricate analytics,"...

WASHINGTON – Over 1 million jobs would be lost over the next fifteen years under the proposed McCain-Lieberman carbon cap proposal according to a study sponsored by United for Jobs and the American Council for Capital Formation that was released today. The new study assessed the economic cost of the updated language in the McCain-Lieberman legislation and showed that 1,306,000 jobs would be lost by 2020 under the McCain-Lieberman emission cap proposal. Among the key findings of the study: • $810 annual costs to households once fully implemented; • Gasoline increases of up to 55 cents per gallon; • 20%...

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) voted 14-1 Tuesday night to oppose the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), with four Texans abstaining and one voting against the position. The four who abstained — Democratic Reps. Charles Gonzalez, Ruben Hinojosa, Solomon Ortiz and Silvestre Reyes — are all publicly undecided about the sweeping trade agreement, but pro-CAFTA forces have said they believe they have secured the support of Ortiz and Reyes. keri rasmussen Rep. Charles Gonzalez was one of four Texas Democrats to abstain. The CHC will circulate its opposition statement this morning and make it public later in the afternoon,...

SALEM -- The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the nation's renewed interest in border security have caused the debate over immigration to spill out of Congress and into Oregon's Capitol. Although immigration policy is largely a federal responsibility, the Legislature is considering several bills intended to crack down on people who are in the country illegally. They include making it tougher for immigrants -- some say even legal ones -- to get a driver's license, register to vote or secure a pay raise. Oregon lawmakers are "much more open" to talking about immigration issues than they used to be, says...

WASHINGTON - National Guardsmen Charles Goodreau, Benito Colon and Michael McLaughlin are fighting not Iraqi insurgents but their employers. They join the growing ranks of part-time warriors who lost jobs or say they were discriminated against when they returned from military service. During the past three years, more than 4,400 service members have filed complaints with the Labor Department charging employers have fired, demoted or discriminated against them - possible violations of the 11-year-old Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act. Such complaints have risen 62 percent since the Sept 11 attacks, as the Pentagon mobilized 483,000 part-time troops -...

For decades economists have insisted that the U.S. wins from globalization. Now they're not so sure But the bulk of this work is labor-intensive and lower skilled and can be done more efficiently by countries that have an abundance of less-educated workers. in the long run a more disruptive trend may be the fast-rising tide of white-collar jobs shifting to cheap-labor countries. "...nobody has a clue about what the numbers are," says Robert C. Feenstra, [UC-Davis] -- competition is coming on in the products such as software. If the new competition drives down prices too much, U.S. export earnings will...

Bright light of Elmwood darkens with parting shot at government About 8:45 a.m. Monday, just moments before he officially closed Jimmy Mac's, owner Richard E. Naylon Jr. turned to his wife, Michele, and said, "I feel like I'm about to euthanize an old friend." Fifteen minutes later, Naylon pulled the plug and began calling his 35 full-time employees, thus ending the 23-year run of Jimmy Mac's, a popular watering hole at Elmwood Avenue and Anderson Place. During its lifetime, Jimmy Mac's became a symbol of Elmwood prosperity, stretching the reach of the trendy strip farther south, below West Delavan Avenue...

Tata Coffee Ltd said on Monday it would supply premium coffee beans to Starbucks, the American coffee retail chain. This is the first time Starbucks, the world's largest and leading coffee chain with over 8,500 retail outlets around the world, has decided to source coffee beans from India, Tata Coffee managing director Hamid Ashraff told reporters in Bangalore. He said, Tata Coffee, the largest integrated coffee company in Asia, is the only producer company to be chosen by Starbucks. Starbucks would buy coffee beans at a 40 per cent price premium from Tata Coffee, it said.

A report that set off alarms nationwide when it said Missouri lost 51,800 jobs from June to July is being revised by the U.S. Labor Department because of inaccuracies. The statewide report, released last month, said Missouri lost more than twice as many jobs as any other state. < snip > The day the report was released, a Labor Department economist said it was misleading. Now, the agency says Missouri made an error when it failed to include teachers on summer vacation among the employed, as Labor Department policy states. < snip > The report seemed especially odd, given the...

The flight of high-technology jobs to low-wage countries like India has recently become a contentious issue in the West, but "outsourcing" of a different kind has been going on for years without controversy and without affecting livelihoods. Roman Catholic priests in India regularly conduct Catholic rituals for people in the West. At hundreds of churches that dot the Southern Indian state of Kerala, Roman Catholic priests offer masses for the dead and give thanks for believers thousands of miles away in Europe and the United States. Church officials say foreign bishops have been forwarding requests for prayers to Indian clergymen...

The anti-outsourcing campaign in the US has started working in favour of Indian business process outsourcing outfits as it has substantially increased awareness amongst US corporates about the benefits of offshoring. A report under preparation by New York-based market research firm Evalueserve, BPO to KPO - Business Process Outsourcing to Knowledge Process Outsourcing, has estimated that the Indian BPO companies have received free advertising worth about $89 million because of the anti-outsourcing campaign. The report is likely to be released in July. Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage(see link below) http://www.rediff.com/money/bpo.htm Confirming the trend, more than one BPO company told Business...

NEW YORK - I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-à-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation. Several executives explained to me that they were opening new plants in Asia - not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component now in an automated high-tech manufacturing...

Outgoing Kohler president sees China as threat to industry By RICK BARRETTrbarrett@journalsentinel.com Posted: April 7, 2004 Having already survived an onslaught of foreign competition, Wisconsin's small-engine industry faces its next threat in China, Richard Shoemaker says. Wednesday, Shoemaker, 59, said he's leaving his job as president of Kohler Engines Co. to pursue other opportunities. He has been with the company for 17 years and president since 2000. Small engines are big business in Wisconsin, which has three of the industry's biggest companies: Kohler Engines, Briggs & Stratton Corp. and Tecumseh Products Co. Together, the threesome produce millions of engines used...

BANGALORE, India — On the main road outside the Electronics City industrial park, the scene is classic Third World chaos. Motor scooters, auto rickshaws, people and animals throng the street beneath a midmorning sun. As drivers hammer their horns, a wayward cow noses through a pile of roadside garbage. This is familiar, impoverished, old India. But leave the main road and you enter a new India, one where the lawns are manicured and the only noise is the chirp of a cell phone or the soft whir of a laptop computer. This is the home of Infosys, a fast-growing technology...

The Midwest should expect more production shifts like those that have seen thousands of jobs leave Tower Automotive's Milwaukee factory in recent years, a survey of auto-parts suppliers shows. To meet customers' demands for price cuts, North American and Western European auto-parts companies will close plants and move as much as 20% of production revenue to lower-cost regions by 2010, the survey by Roland Berger LLC found. Eastern Europe and China will largely benefit as manufacturers move factories to areas where hourly pay is a tenth of the rate in countries such as Germany. General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co.,...