Bad: when your employer forces you to lie about your tip income in order to pay you less than minimum wage. Worse: when your employer gets caught, they then lay you off as if its your fucking fault. Here is AviationPros.com with the details:
PrimeFlight Aviation Services, a national ground handler accused of wage standards violations last year, will lay off about 64 people at San Antonio International Airport after losing a contract with Delta Air Lines.
The Nashville, Tenn.-based company told the Texas Workforce Commission that the employees would lose their jobs on April 30, the day PrimeFlight's ramp contract with Delta ends.
PrimeFlight officials could not be reached for comment. The company provides a variety of services at San Antonio International, including curbside baggage handling and ground handling services for aircraft.
Airport spokesman Rich Johnson said PrimeFlight had contracts with both Delta and Aeromexico. How many PrimeFlight employees would remain after the layoffs was unclear.
The company also expects to lay off 276 employees at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston after United Airlines replaced it with another contractor there. Those layoffs are scheduled for May 15.
PrimeFlight drew headlines last year when employees in both Houston and San Antonio said they were pressured by management to report more tip income than they actually made so PrimeFlight would not have to kick in money to meet minimum wage guidelines.
It gives me a warm, safe feeling all over to know that people employed in the airline industry are being treated fantastically by their employers.
Bonus: I'd like to dedicate this song to PrimeFlight...
Death is in the air there's trouble all around Now you got it coming This time you're going down Deeds not words you should've told the truth You're a liar and traitor and now we got the proof
It is probably not a very good time to be the nation's "leading space shuttle contractor." Here is Florida Today with the story:
United Space Alliance, NASA’s lead space shuttle contractor, today shaves its work force by 10 percent with its latest round of layoffs, which include 181 employees based at Kennedy Space Center.
In all, 269 employees are leaving company offices in Florida, Texas and Alabama, the majority of them (186) through voluntary layoffs officially called self-nominations.
More than half the departing employees were the last to receive a “critical skills” bonus that was offered as an incentive to help retain those skills through flyout of the shuttle program, which completed its last mission last July. All laid off employees receive a severance package.
After today’s cuts, Houston-based USA expects to have 2,589 employees, including 1,323 at KSC.
Another round of reductions is planned in the fall.
Given that the space shuttle will never fly again, it is kind of baffling that this company is even still in business.
Bonus: Major Tom isn't coming home because he never got off the ground
Given that home sales remain mired near their all time record lows, I'm surprised we don't see more stories like this. Here is the Dallas Business Journal with the details:
Saxon Mortgage, which services home mortgages, plans to close a pair of North Texas facilities and lay off nearly 680 people.
That’s according to a March 28 filing with the Texas Workforce Commission.
Based in Glen Allen, Va., Saxon Mortgage plans to shutter facilities located at 3701 Regent Blvd. in Irving (affecting 226 people) and 4700 Mercantile Dr. in Fort Worth (454 people), according to the Texas Workforce Commission filing.
The layoffs are planned to start on May 28 and will continue through Dec. 31, the company’s letter said.
And so it goes.
Bonus: A little ditty dedicated to the home mortgage industry
Some layoff stories are actually more heartless than others. This is one of the bad ones, as reported by a local Texas television station:
A west El Paso research company shut its doors for good Thursday, which left 150 people out of work. Employees said the layoffs happened overnight and with no warning.
The employees of Eastern Research Services said they walked into work Thursday morning and were immediately called into a meeting to be told they were being let go. After being escorted out by security, a group of employees gathered outside to break the news to their co-workers.
"We were at work yesterday. We had extra hours," said P. Haji Rivera.
Just 24 hours later.
"We're working one day and today we're out of work," said Rivera.
Rivera said some were notified of the layoffs when they called the employee hotline.
"ERS is permanently seizing operations and shutting down all of its offices," said a recording on the hotline.
Other employees of the company said when they showed up for work managers told them all ERS offices across the country were closing their doors for good.
"The company has been losing money for some time and no longer has the ability to continue operating," the recording said.
The company based in Pennsylvania does polling and market research for many agencies.
"We were hoping that they give us at least a notice, like a week notice that they're going to be closing down, not just overnight," said Rivera.
That's the problem with the recent trend to change over from having "Personnel" to having "Human Resources." When you are merely a resource, they think they can treat you like just another piece of furniture.
Bonus: I guess all we can do for El Paso is play you a song
I guess it isn't enough that everyone who doesn't make a conscious decision to try to avoid being overexposed to our relentless media culture is now bombarded with advertising nearly every waking minute, nor that children are sucked into the hologram's vortex while still wearing diapers. In a desperate scramble to raise revenues, school districts in Texas have now decided to turn their school buildings and buses into billboards for corporate America. Here is the New York Times with the details:
The rooftop of a suburban high school is not a location that companies usually consider prime advertising real estate. But in Humble Independent School District, it may be. The district’s high school lies directly in a flight path for Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
Although the rooftop plan has yet to come to fruition, Humble I.S.D. has already sold the naming rights to nearly every piece of its football stadium, including the entryway, the press box and the turf. Its school buses carry advertisements for the Houston Astros and local hospitals, among others.
The school district is pioneering a practice that an increasing number of districts across the state are adopting: selling advertisements on pieces of school property to help make up for some of the money lost through state budget cuts.
Advertising revenue can benefit school districts that primarily have two sources of income — what they receive from local taxpayers and what they get from the state and federal governments.
But with school leaders under pressure to find creative financing sources and few state-level guidelines about what is appropriate, some researchers who study the impact of ads in schools question whether schools fully grasp the consequences of commercialism creeping into public schools.
The proliferation of companies like Steep Creek Media, which acts as a middleman between districts and would-be advertisers, has made it simpler for schools to get into advertising. Steep Creek offers an attractive proposition for schools — and business is booming, according to its owner and founder, Cynthia Calvert, who represents 35 districts and has had to turn down handfuls of clients.
In exchange for what usually amounts to a cut of 40 percent of the profits, the company lures potential advertisers with a diverse menu of placements: on buses, textbook covers, in-school television monitors, scoreboards and Web sites.
Districts have the ultimate say over what ads they accept, but Steep Creek handles all the work in between, including graphic design.
Easier access to advertisers may not always translate to a more thoughtful process for schools, however.
“There doesn’t seem to be a real handle on the part of the school districts for what they are getting into,” said Faith Boninger, a researcher with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies how advertising in schools affects students.
Ms. Boninger said many districts entered into advertising agreements with an attitude of “let’s do it, we need the money” without understanding the psychological and educational costs to students.
Having advertisements in schools is not consistent with the teaching of critical thinking, Ms. Boninger said. And what is being sold — fast food, for instance — can run counter to subjects being taught, like nutrition. She added that the polarized gender stereotypes and materialist perspectives that may come with exposure to advertisements had been shown to harm students’ self-esteem.
Gee, ya think? If anything, advertising is the antithesis of critical thinking. Its whole aim is to get people to respond emotionally and impulsively and then act in a way that is likely NOT in their best interest. (My God, Loser, if you don't go into hock in order to buy our shitty product, then you aren't cool and all your friends are gonna LAUGH at you!) It is in no way, shape or form conducive to learning and would not be allowed anywhere near a classroom in any society that was serious about educating its young people.
It's no accident that during the past couple of generations as television, advertising and now the Internet have become more and more sophisticated, our public discourse has corroded so dramatically. Whacked out charlatans like Lyndon LaRouche used to be ostracized from mainstream political discourse. Nowadays, however, the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Rick Perry are treated by the media as serious presidential candidates despite routinely making reality challenged pronouncements that would have made even LaRouche blush. That can only happen in a society in which reason and logic are no longer valued by a substantial percentage of the population.
It's a sad state of affairs, and I see no indication that it is going to turn around for the better any time soon.
Bonus: It was bad enough when they started using the media to try and "educate" us dumbasses back in the 1970s...thinking back on it, these silly videos never helped my learning one damn bit even though I'd seen them so many times I could recite the songs by heart
Here is another story about the effects that the slow collapse of the tax base of state and local governments is having on public safety and law enforcement. Click2 Houston.com has the rather scary details:
Since 2011, the Houston Police Department has faced mounting criticism over the thousands of untested rape kits sitting in evidence. Now, because of a recently completed audit, HPD knows exactly how big the problem is and just how much of a challenge the department still faces.
Last year, Local 2 Investigates was first to report on a massive back log of untested rape kits stored in the department's property room. These kits can contain vital pieces of evidence that can help catch and convict sexual predators and help rape survivors find justice.
Last year, HPD was one of only two police agencies in the country to be awarded a federal grant from the National Institute of Justice to conduct an audit as to exactly how many rape kits have been sitting in evidence untested. HPD officials told Local 2 that audit is complete.
HPD reported, as of Dec. 1, there are 6,663 untested rape kits stored in evidence. HPD officials said some of the untested kits date back to the 1980s.
"Rape kits have to be a No. 1 priority," said Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officers Union. "These kits have to be tested and they have to be tested quickly."
So how many other jurisdictions do you suppose are having this problem but haven't received federal grant money to do what they should be doing anyway...figuring out how big a problem they have?
As with so many other bad things happening in our economy these days, it all points back to declining revenues:
However, HPD officials said one of the biggest challenges will be finding the resources to tackle the backlog while at the same time handling an average of 930 new rape kits submitted to the department each year.
I'm sure the victims of these henious crimes will find plenty of cold comfort in that last statement.
This story caught my attention because the scenario is very similar to the one that caused my father to be laid off for six months back in 1986: a leveraged buyout attempt by a UK based equity firm. My dad was eventually rehired. These folks may not be so lucky, as reported My SA.com:
San Antonio-based medical devices and biotechnology firm Kinetic Concepts Inc. announced 127 layoffs on Tuesday, 114 of them in San Antonio, most involving administrative positions, as the company realigns its three business units.
The company employs about 7,100 globally, 2,100 in San Antonio. The layoffs account for a little more than 5 percent of the San Antonio workforce and less than 2 percent companywide. The 13 layoffs outside of San Antonio involved positions within the United States.
The layoffs mainly eliminated positions in finance, human resources, information technology and corporate communications. To a lesser degree, layoffs occurred in marketing and research and development, a corporate spokesman said.
Okay, lay some corporate FlackSpeak on me:
“Throughout our 35-year history, we've been a stable employer and provided good jobs to thousands of employees — even during the global economic challenges of the past few years. With the changing landscape in healthcare, and with an eye toward the future, we need to match our workforce to the needs of the business and our customers.
“We will continue to maintain a significant employee base in San Antonio and look forward to opening our new global headquarters here this summer,” the statement concluded.
KCI last year acquired 8.3 acres at 12930 Interstate 10 West, south of Hausman Road, where a three-story, 100,000-square-foot building is being built for its new headquarters.
The layoffs follow the November leveraged buyout of KCI by a group led by London-based private equity firm Apax Partners. The deal was valued at $6.1 billion.
So typical...the billionaires play their buyout games and the workers get the shaft. That's how it is in our crony capitalist system these days.
Bonus: "Games people play...you take it or you leave it. The things that they say don't make it right"
In my July 11th post from last year, "Why We’re Screwed (Part 1): Public Opinion Poll Regarding Entitlement Cuts" I asserted that as the American tax base continues to shrink, the various interest groups are going to find themselves engaged in a fierce struggle to maintain their share of the booty. So far, those clashes have not erupted into actual violence, but the tipping point could be drawing near, as demonstrated by this recent story from a local Dallas television station:
After a raucous meeting lasting more than four hours with police intervention, Dallas ISD trustees voted to close 11 elementary schools, which will result in 177 layoffs of full-time employees.
Ooh...grab the popcorn ma. This looks like it's gonna be GOOD. "Wake up people; are you asleep? Are you sick? Or what?" Joyce Foreman, one of the first public speakers opposing school closures, asked board members.
Tempers were hot. Her speech could have foreshadowed what was to come.
"Treating teachers with respect is not that expensive. Do it!" said Bill Betzen, a former Dallas ISD teacher.
Actually, I beg to differ, Mr. Betzen. The full salary and benefits of 177 teachers are actually quite expensive in these tough economic times. Not that I'm at all happy to see these teachers lose their jobs. It's just that the money to pay them has to come from SOMEWHERE.
But it gets even better:
For more than an hour and a half speakers blasted the board until one, Joyce Foreman, questioned why several trustees weren’t even listening. They had left the room.
That’s when the situation spiraled south.
"Security, I would like you to escort Ms. Joyce Foreman out of this meeting right now," said DISD Board President Dr. Lew Blackburn.
A team of uniformed Dallas ISD police officers closed in on Foreman, who was standing at the microphone as the crowd erupted in protest.
"If you do not get quiet we will move this meeting down the hall and you will not be a part of it!" Blackburn said over the loud jeers.
"No Justice! No Peace!" Foreman yelled, holding her purse above her head as police pushed her back towards the door.
"Sir! You need to be quiet!" Blackburn said to someone in the commotion.
Seconds later, he suspended the meeting. "Trustees, we are moving down the hall!"
Trustees retreated to their smaller board room to continue the meeting away from the anger.
Cowards. If you can't stand the heat, then give up your cushy position. Yes, I realize the crowd was being unreasonable, and that the schools are facing tough budgetary times in this age of austerity. But if you can't handle the stress that comes with being the hatchet person, then GTFO already. It was the unrealistic promises made to people at all levels of society by hacks such as yourselves that created the massive sense of entitlement we have in this country in the first place.
Bonus: "Strong words in...the staff room...the accusations fly"
Probably no other state in the U.S. has been as staunchly supportive as Texas of the politicians who have been firmly in the back pockets of big business and enacted the globalization policies which have wrought devastation upon working and middle class Americans. Nevertheless, as a staunch opponent of both big business and "free" trade (Once again, it's only free for the elites who profit from it and is paid for by those who lose their jobs) I still take no satisfaction from seeing the policies they have consistently voted for now devastate their livelihoods.
Among other things Tyler, Texas, was once home to a Kelly Springfield tire factory that was a sister plant to the one in my hometown where my father served his whole career as a middle manager. That plant closed in 2008, and now, according to a local television station, it is being joined by another factory from the Carrier corporation, which is shutting down to move production across the border to Mexico:
More than 400 employees at Tyler's Carrier plant were told this morning that the Carrier plant in Tyler could be closing. The company has proposed the closure but it is subject to a collective bargaining agreement with the union.
If they choose to close, the company will continue operations through the end of 2013.
Carrier tells CBS 19 they are proposing the closure after a review of business and market conditions.
"I thought it was a shame that again we're losing jobs to a foreign country," Carrier worker Darren Hawks said about the possible closure.
He's worked at Tyler's plant for close to 20 years.
"I don't know what I'm going to do because I'm right in the middle of an age where I don't want to be looking for a job. There are a lot of unemployed people out there who are a lot younger than me so I'm just curious what job I'm going to find," he said.
At least one worker knows what the real story is:
Carrier spokesperson Michelle Caldwell says The shutdown is pending a collective bargaining agreement with the sheet metal workers union.
"We go under negotiations starting next week for severance packages and whatever we can get for employees who lose their jobs,"Local Sheet Metal Workers Union manager, Blain Strickland, said.
Strickland says the jobs are headed to Mexico.
"They're wages are like $4 an hour. American companies can't compete with that," he said.
Well, not since NAFTA anyway. But you have to ask yourself this: in a few years when nearly all of America's good paying blue collar jobs have been destroyed by globalization and the economic effects of peak oil, who is going to be left to buy Carrier's products? Because the low paid Mexican workers sure won't be able to afford them.
The idea that poorer Mexicans, many of whom used to live on subsistence farms and have been driven off their land by plunging grain prices that were a direct result of NAFTA and the subsequent flood of American agriculture products into the country, are somehow better off working long hours for crappy wages in the shitty factories that have been built to replace the ones in the U.S. is laughable. Does anyone really think that the surge in illegal Mexican immigrants to the U.S. looking for work after NAFTA was passed was just a coincidence?
Mr. Strickland also took his soon-be-ex-employers task for their excuses:
Carrier said there decision came down to the numbers. They said since 2005 housing starts are down 71 percent and non residential construction is down 59 percent. Carrier said it was those numbers that affected their market decision."
Strickland disagrees with that explanation.
"Since 1992 carrier has closed 6 manufacturing plants in the United States," he said. "There is no other reason than cheap labor."
In the last decade, Tyler's Carrier plant has slowly shrunk its workforce from 1250 to just over 400. A blow to the economy.
No doubt the housing crash was a big factor in the declining profit margins for Carrier, but that still doesn't explain the previous rounds of layoffs and closings during the boom years.
Ultimately, however, despite the unrelenting bad news, hope somehow still springs eternal:
"Next two years you never know what will happen things might go skyrocket high," Stewart said.
Or things might crater to as yet unseen depths. And quite frankly, the latter scenario seems far more likely than the former given that there is no driver for the creation of good paying jobs in America these days.
Bonus: Linda and Emmylou sing a melancholy Bruce Springsteen tune about crossing the border
image: DSC is "ready for anything," except the continuation of the economic downturn
Texas has been getting hit pretty hard with layoff notices lately. Here is the Dallas Business Journal with the latest bad news:
DSC Logistics plans to lay off 130 employees at its Roanoke facility.
The Des Plaines, Ill.-based company told the Texas Workforce Commission that it notified employees about the layoffs on Wednesday.
Verlyn Suderman, DSC vice president and general counsel, told the commission in a letter that a “significant loss of business affecting the facility” prompted the layoffs.
Hey, at least DSC Vice President and General Counsel Verlyn Suderman didn't try to sugar coat it. Business is bad, which is the reason for the firings. There, now was that so hard?
Bonus: "Is it any wonder I'm not a criminal? Is it any wonder I'm not it jail?"
As the final regular season Sunday of the NFL season kicks off, here is a story from CBS Sports about the former America's Team that might better explain why the league took its lockout of the players to the very brink this past summer:
In the stadium’s first year, the team drew an average of 89,700 fans. Even last year’s 6-10 team managed to attract 87,000 fans. But this year, the fan attendance number dropped to just 85,000 fans – despite the fact that Cowboys have a chance to win their division this weekend.
RJ Choppy with 105.3 The Fan analyzed the attendance drop from a few different angles, but does not see it as a huge problem. “The Cowboys have been sort of mediocre and the economy has been in the tank,” he said. “I don’t really think it should be such a long-term problem, but in the short-term, it certainly is a little bit of a concern.”
If the team starts winning consistently again, Choppy predicts that the attendance will go up again. “So much of it is economics,” he said. “You have to pick things that you want to cut from your life and, unfortunately, one of the first things that go are recreational.
”Adding to the attendance concern is the sheer size of Cowboys Stadium. While other NFL teams have been building smaller arenas, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones bucked the trend and went bigger. “Everyone who builds these new stadiums, they’re going smaller, more intimate, more quaint,” Choppy said. “I think the natural feeling that, well, that Cowboys Stadium is so big. It’s almost to the point where it’s not practical.”
They can try to spin this story all they want. The fact is that not too long ago many NFL teams had years long waiting lists for people who wanted to buy season tickets. Nowadays, a lot of NFL games don't even sell out anymore. Given the league's prominence at the top of the heap of the sporting world in America, that is pretty significant.
As for me, I was an NFL season ticket holder for 13 years until I sold my personal seat licenses for a tidy little profit prior to the 2010 season. I have to admit that I don't at all miss going to the games at the prices they charge for tickets these days.
Bonus: Sorry Josh, but I think soon you MAY be the only cowboy
The reports just keep rolling in about effects of the hellish drought Texas suffered through this past year. Here is Reuters with yet another horrible story:
The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service.
"In 2011, Texas experienced an exceptional drought, prolonged high winds, and record-setting temperatures," Forest Service Sustainable Forestry chief Burl Carraway told Reuters on Tuesday. "Together, those conditions took a severe toll on trees across the state."
He said that between 100 million and 500 million trees were lost. That figure does not include trees killed in wildfires that have scorched an estimated 4 million acres in Texas since the beginning of 2011. A massive wildfire in Bastrop, east of Austin in September that destroyed 1,600 homes, is blamed for killing 1.5 million trees.
The tree loss is in both urban and rural areas and represents as much as 10 percent of all the trees in the state, Carraway said.
"This is a generational event," Barry Ward, executive director of the nonprofit Trees for Houston, which supports forestry efforts, told Reuters on Tuesday. "Mature trees take 20 or 30 years to re-grow. This will make an aesthetic difference for decades to come."
He said the loss will affect the state in many ways. For example, there is increased fire danger because all the dead trees are now fuel, Ward said.
There's little doubt that should Texas suffer a series of summers like this past one that the quality of life, to say nothing of the ability of the landscape to support life, is going to plummet fast. And yet hope still prevails:
Forest Resource Analyst Chris Edgar said that trees and forests are amazingly resilient.
"Loss of trees due to adverse weather conditions is something that is a part of the natural process of the forest," said Edgar, who works for the Texas Forest Service.
One of the worst areas of die-off occurred in the part of east Texas known as the Piney Woods, he said. That is one of the country's leading producers of wood and paper products. It is still unclear what the long-term damage may be to that industry, which is one of the largest agricultural employers in the state.
Carraway said that what Mother Nature has damaged, Mother Nature can repair.
"Assuming the rainfall levels get back to normal, I certainly see the forest being able to recover," he said.
That's an iffy assumption at this point, Mr. Edgar. I hope for the sake of you and everyone else living in Texas that you are proven correct. But I sure wouldn't invest in any money in Texas woodlands right about now.
Bonus: Seems like an appropriate time for this song
North Carolina is looking at issuing its own gold and silver money. They are also working on making gold and silver legal tender, as Utah has already done. What does this mean. It has never happened before exactly like this. Answer: Banks long ago used to issue paper money backed by their bank deposits, but, as far as I know, no state has ever issued metal money in gold of silver coin. There may have been something of this sort back in Colonial days, but not in many years. This move forces the gurus in Washington DC to try to explain how very safe the dollar is. Millions of Americans are holding their breath, wondering if we are another Weimer Republic about to tank. What NC is doing is forcing the issue, while they also get ready to stand at the front of the monetary line with real money. Please, Rick Perry, DO SOMETHING TEXAN PLEASE. If North Carolina can pull this off, with their lack of resources, Texas could easily do it using oil to back up the arrangement. __
Simply for this reason-- Texas WILL survive by exports. We are the largest export state in the USA. For this reason, California and several other states will soon be in Washington DC begging for a bailout, and Texas will be booming right along. This is because Texas don't spend it if they don't have it. So, we will all tighten our belts a bit, and keep pumping the oil and shipping beef. Texas did not get in top place in the USA by printing funny money and getting loans from Charlie Wong. We live on what comes in via sales tax, and that will work again. Also, we don't let people go on welfare until they have worked in Texas, and then they don't get unemployment forever when they lose a job. You work, or you starve, or you go back to Taxechusetts. Also, living under a bridge is not dishonorable in Texas if that is how you want to live. Just don't expect to be entitled by your choices. Finally, Texas has one natural resource that is lacking in almost all other states. In fact some states try to outlaw it and criminalize it. That natural resource is attitude. If you don't have one when you get here, you better get one in a hurry, or you will be left behind. Ecclesiastes 9:10 (KJV) Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. We have plenty of land left to bury losers-- get to work. Now, Bunkie, I bet you are troubled by this blog, right? Well, I will tell you what to do-- Just look up at the top of the page, left corner. See that arrow pointing to the left? Click it, and you will never have to read stuff like this again :-)
