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News :: Miscellaneous |
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What?-- Me Worry? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mike Lehman
(No verified email address) |
07 Feb 2001
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Reminiscent of Mad Magazine’s expert on nothing and anything, Alfred E. Neuman, the Sunday Feb. 4, 2001 Business section of the News-Gazette had a rather interesting take from ‘experts’ on the thousands of recent lay-offs that are afflicting Illinois workers. |
‘Experts’, according to the story, say that all these people losing their jobs have no need to worry. It is unclear from the story if these ‘experts’ are the victims of any layoffs, but it would seem not. This blasé approach to thousands of people out of work indicates that the primary interest of the author is in keeping wages down just when the benefits of a record-length bull market on Wall Street were finally trickling down to the wages of working families.
While stocks have taken a beating in recent months, in a much anticipated response to over-valued stock values in some sectors of the market, it looks like it took worries about wage increases finally having to be paid to workers to trigger the rising tide of job losses.
It is interesting that the last two months have seen a record pace of lay-offs, according to statistics kept by the Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago firm that has been keeping detailed records of lay-offs since 1993. December set a record, with 133,713 layoffs nationwide, then was eclipsed by the 142,208 jobs lost in January. These were the first back-to-back months to exceed 100,000-plus lost jobs since the survey was began.
It is interesting that this particular bit of bad news hasn’t appeared in the News-Gazette yet, since C,G & C is an Illinois-based company. It is interesting that these layoffs seem to have been timed to occur after the much-disputed November election, so as not to embarrass either of the two corporate parties during the tired, but ultimately tied, campaign. It is interesting that many of the lay-offs seem to be occurring in the technology sector.
Technology companies had complained that they couldn’t find enough workers last year and needed to import an extra 300,000 foreign workers. Their paid lackeys in Congress managed to accommodate these ‘needs’, without any serious effort to raise the minimum wage (badly needed and unraised since 1997), prior to adjourning for these Congress-critters’ almost inevitable, corporate-funded reelection. It seems that the primary result of these "badly needed" workers being brought into the country will be to further depress wages in the technology sector when they are combined with the hundreds of thousands of recent lay-offs.
Next time you’re down at the unemployment office, ask if they have any jobs for ‘experts’--- they never seem to suffer a lay-off. |
