Posts Tagged ‘politics and your career’

Voters Approve Paid Sick Leave in Milwaukee

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Anne Duffy wrote this article for the American Staffing Association explaining that Milwaukee has passed a ballot that requires private employers to provide paid sick leave for their employees:

Thanks to a ballot initiative passed Nov. 4, Milwaukee has become the third U.S. city to require private employers to provide paid sick leave for their employees. The ballot initiative passed with 69% of voters approving it. Milwaukee joins San Francisco and Washington, DC, in mandating paid leave for employees who suffer from an illness or need to care for a sick child.

Under the measure, Milwaukee employers are required to provide their employees with a minimum of one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, up to 72 hours of paid sick leave per employee per calendar year. Milwaukee’s definition of employee means “any person who is employed within the geographic boundaries of the city by an employer, and includes a part-time or temporary employee.” Employees of employers with fewer than 10 workers can accrue a maximum of 40 hours of paid leave in a calendar year.

Although employees begin accruing leave at the commencement of their employment, they are not eligible to use accrued sick leave until the 90th calendar day of their employment.

Opponents of the law criticize the ordinance for its overly broad language. The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce plans to challenge the new law in court. MMAC president Tim Sheehy said, “This costly, one-size-fits-all government mandate will have a devastating impact on city businesses in an already unstable economy. This mandate will make the city of Milwaukee an island of regulation, discouraging business development in the region’s core business district and scaring away potential employers that want to locate in the city.”

After reading this article a called a friend Nebi Torbica who owns a bar/lounge called Moct in downtown Milwaukee to ask him what he thought and what other business owners thought. He was very upset and said that most business owners in Milwaukee are upset. His thoughts are:

“…that we are entering a slow time for business because it’s the end of the year, the holidays, and the economy is at its worst in years. This is not the time to introduce something like this. It boggles my mind that these politicians don’t put all factors in consideration before approving or passing a ballot.”

Other cities are also looking to make some changes and follow Milwaukee, but we will see if they will wait or execute immediately.


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The automotive industry with the current economy and a bailout?

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

The automotive industry…the cut backs…where the automotive market is going if it doesn’t get help.

President elect Barack Obama isn’t just words. Remember, “Just words?” Well, he is capable of delivering tough words too, as he did during the campaign to the Detroit Economic Club. He asked them whether or not they can move into the modern age with hybrids and gas saving vehicles. “Change.” Just a word. He is asking the automotive industry to change.

And change is what is needed in Detroit. The sad news, if you don’t know it is that foreign manufacturers now sell over half the new cars in the USA. The American automobile industry is losing the battle.

The big question is, “can this be turned around?” And “if so, HOW?”

Opinions vary. “Bailout.” Just a word? The nation is divided on the recent financial bailout of the Wall Street fat cats. “Let ‘em fail and take the hit,” some say, but it’s not that easy. Big Oil is the enemy, but guess who owns Big Oil? YOU do! Your 401 K’s do.

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

It’s not only US car manufacturing that’s in trouble. A so called “American” car these days is composed more and more of foreign parts. As an example the 2008 Focus has only 65 percent domestic-parts content. When I was in school, that was considered passing, but just barely, with a grade of “D.”

Where is the US automotive industry headed ? Consider this. According to http://economistmom.com/2008/11/detroit-is-hemorrhaging/ “240,000 jobs were lost in October, bringing the year’s total job losses to nearly 1.2 million.  And the year isn’t over, of course; we’ve surely got two more months of bad news to go.”

Cauterization needs to be done, and quickly, before the industry bleeds to death. And no one has the answer, save those with common sense. It is time for group action and compromise. Without change, nothing changes, right? Where have we heard that before. Well, now is the time to put it into action.

Bailouts? As anti-entrepreneurial as they sound, if well constructed, we should go for it. Unions have got to be willing to tighten their belts and accept less, face the hard cold fact that foreign workers can often produce more and better and cheaper products.

And finally, we need to revive the “Buy American” campaign that was so popular a few years ago but seems to have waned, and don’t just read the bumper stickers. Do it.


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Unemployment Rate Comparison Between the Country and NWI Indiana

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

“The unemployment rate in the Chicago metropolitan area jumped to 7.5 percent in July from 5.4 percent a year earlier, and the area lost 2,700 jobs, the Illinois Department of Employment Security reported Thursday.” This is according to the Huffinton Post on 14 November 2008.
With over 12,700 people per square mile, Chicago is one of the nation’s most densely populated cities, with a population of an estimated 2.9 million, making it the third largest city in the United States, behind New York first, and Los Angeles in second.
According to the US Department of Labor, “Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department reported…”

That makes the Chicago unemployment rate a bleak 15 % higher than the national average.

In comparison, the Northwest Indiana unemployment rate for Setember, 2008 was 5.64 %, this figure including Lake, Porter, LaPorte, Jasper, Newton, Starke, Pulaski Counties Combined (source http://www.nidataplus.com/lfeRg1.htm)

This makes the Chicago unemployment rate a whopping 32 % higher than for the population of Northern Indiana.

What lies in store for the windy city?

According to guru Lesley R. Chin, of http://thechicagocitizen.com/?p=205 “city workers are feeling the crunch as labor leaders brace themselves for layoffs announced by Mayor Richard M. Daley.” He also advises that more than 3,000 vacant city positions will not be filled and 1,000 city employees are to be laid off. Laborers Union Local 1001 will suffer 300 layoffs. Crew sizes are to be reduced.

According to Wikipedia, “The Chicago 2016 Olympic bid is the attempt by the city of Chicago and the United States- with the support of other cities, townships and villages in the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin- to be chosen by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics. In the event of Chicago being selected by the IOC, the 2016 Games will be the first Summer Olympics held in the Americas since the 1996 Atlanta Games.”
How might this affect employment opportunities in Chicago? Certainly, construction and other labor jobs will be given a boost as sports arenas are refurbished and or newly built to prepare for the games and house the traditional Olympic village.

Using the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta as an example, estimates were of over 77 thousand full and part time jobs. (source - http://www.selig.uga.edu/forecast/olympics/OLYMTEXT.HTM)


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Barrack Obama as president, his ideas and how he thinks he can help the country

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

The battle is over, and the spoils go to the winner. The question is, how spoiled is America and are we headed for a depression, or at the very least a severe recession. This piece is to speculate on Barrack Obama as president, his ideas and how he thinks he can help this country in a time of depression.

First off, what IS a depression? Every economist knows the old groaner of a joke: A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose your job.

One commonly accepted definition of a recession is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product for two or more consecutive quarters.

Perhaps easier to understand is the definition of a depression, which is generally accepted to be a severe economic downturn that lasts several years. United States since 1929-1939. Fortunately, the United States economy has not experienced a depression States since 1929-1939.

There is also what the medical, psychiatric community call depression, which is, according to the Free Dictionary by Farle, “clinical depression: Psychiatry Persistent sadness or loss of interest in activities for more than or equal to weeks in absence of external precipitants … Grief, bereavement Clinical Changed eating habits, insomnia, early morning wakening, decreased interest in normal activities, depressed mood, fatigue, suicidal ideation.”

Clinical depression is most often treated with medication, with varied results. When one medication does not achieve the desired results or weakens in effectiveness over time, what does you doctor do? He changes your meds.

So, have we elected the right anti-depressant in Barack Obama? Is the nation headed for both financial and psychological depression? The jury is still out.

In a video interview on CNN on 10/21/2008 Joe Biden warned Barack Obama supporters of war and depression. Was this merely political rhetoric?

According to Time Magazine, “not since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the midst of the Depression has a new President faced a set of challenges quite as formidable as those that await Obama. That’s why Obama has been quicker off the blocks in setting up his government than any of his recent predecessors were, particularly Bill Clinton, who did not announce a single major appointment until mid-December. As the President-elect put it in his first radio address, “We don’t have a moment to lose.”
From www.barackobama.com “Obama did not let his perceived lack of experience stop him from developing insightful ideas on how to avoid the financial crisis or actions that could be taken if this financial crisis could no longer be averted…In order to get a different result from the previous Depression, we need to CHANGE what we are doing and learn from previous mistakes an apply the knowledge gained to avoid similar results,
There’s an idea that 50% of solving a problem is admitting the problem exists. Obama ran on a platform of change. Let us wish him well and hope he changes the right things.


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