Thursday, December 11, 2008

Trying to get your head around the numbers

Just sitting here trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. If I stay in Haz Mat work I'll have to wait for at least another six months before anything brakes. I haven't seen any great educational opportunities that would lead to something good. The next big thing will be green renewable energy but there's no specifics being released at the present.

The current population of the U.S. is 305 million people. Of that number 153.1 million make up the work force. Of that number over 10.3 million are out of work. While doing a little research for my last post I looked up plant closures to have a look into the future. It doesn't look good in the short run. Here's a list of some of the layoffs. I'll try to list as many "chunks" of the situation below.

Number Type work State
40 electronics plant Pa.
275 Syracuse China N.Y.
390 electric motors MO
240 printing plant Al
300 steel plant Ill
800 poultry plant Ar
300 Cintas Ky
200+ KraftMaid Ut
600 Renfro SC

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of small companies that are laying off 50 60 and 75 workers while other companies are closing for a week or two to save costs. Some of these companies will come back while others will never open again. Then there's the auto industry where some 13 million jobs are on the line. That's including the auto workers and all the parts and manufacturing companies tied with the big three. All that can be done at the moment is a short bridge loan to keep the companies afloat until Obama can bail out the rest of this country. And whatever sacrafices the workers make should be applied to the congress. We sign their pay checks why should they get out of this scott free? We've lost 4.7% of our income (buying power/equity) over the last year alone. Why should they be any different?

Update after watching the senate hearing:
I find it interesting that congress wouldn't put any restrictions on the money given to the banks and investment firms but they'll put massive limitations and concessions on auto workers. This is runs counter to what's needed and blaming line workers for having a decent wage and benefits while executives make thousands of times what an hourly worker makes is just absurd. So if you have a white collar you get a blank check but if you have a blue collar it's a different story.

8 comments:

BBC said...

Let's see, their wanting to give the Federal judges a five grand a year raise.

"To Serve the People" is no longer a concept. It's more like "Pay me big bucks or I'm not going to do it."

I think that Haz Mat work will be around for some time, but may evolve in other directions and you may have to be flexible and relocate.

Be mobile, move around to where the jobs are. There must be some need for them in those storm areas in the south.

Consider getting a light and sturdy 18 - 20 foot camp trailer and following the work?

Also, a damn good panhandler can make a damn good living.

Demeur said...

Unfortunately we took care of the storm damage weeks before they started working on the houses. We had a couple of guys there cleaning up the oil company plants. It only took about two weeks. All that work is long over. The problem there was that they used a lot of illegal mexican workers with no training and no personal protective gear. So no thanks.
It's not that there's no work. It's just that it's all on hold until the economy gets better. With that dumbass Bush in the white house he's letting companies get away with murder. Notice that there hasn't been any companies getting fined for violating EPA laws in quite some time.

BBC said...

Yeah, I read that one of the big shot women in FEMA had an illegal housekeeper.

And I have little hope in Obama fixing much of it.

Anonymous said...

It always comes down to taking money away from the WORKERS or shoving them out the door. If the hierarchy wants to save their company, why don't THEY take a paycut? Take 10%, and their company jets away. Keep that to pay the WORKERS with.

We recently retired from the fire department. whew! HAZMAT was part of it.

My daughter, in order to salvage her future, is working full time (while still available) and taking nursing classes at age 39.

It's like musical chairs, but without the chairs, and the music is provided by the corporate big spenders.

Anonymous said...

I meant, "corporate big EARNERS"

BBC said...

What is the line between corporate big earners and corporate what is right?

Fifty grand? A hundred grand? Two hundred grand? A million? Two million?

What is a fair line?

Demeur said...

Dana - Interesting. I started in HazMat when I was 39. I'm too young to retire and too old to be doing this much longer.

Billy - What's a fair wage for a CEO? How about five or six times the hourly worker rate like they pay in Japan and most other countries. Not the six or seven thousand times like they're getting now.

Distributorcap said...

class warfare - plain and simple