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News :: Labor |
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Labor Headlines 2/14/04 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
16 Feb 2004
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Headlines broadcast during the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturday at 11 am on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign. Bush Team: Sending Jobs Overseas is Good for US; Despite Economic "Recovery," Rich get Richer, Poor get Poorer; Grocery Corp's Announce Huge Losses as Strike Enters Fourth Month; Nepal Children to Take up Cudgels Against Child Labor |
Bush Team: Sending Jobs Overseas is Good for US
Question: Is outsourcing jobs to foreign countries a good thing or a bad thing? In the "Economic Report to the President," George Bush's top economic adviser said sending jobs overseas is a good thing, but the powerful Speaker of the House, and even George Bush himself, are distancing themselves from the comments. Gregory Mankiw is the conservative Harvard economist who heads Bush's team of economic advisers, and in the report, he described the advantages that corporations gain as they export jobs. Mankiw's comments were a red flag to Bush's critics, who have point out that Bush has failed to the 3 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost since July 2000. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry told supporters Tuesday that the administration was finally admitting what was behind its economic policies. Bush's adviser was also being called to task for a section of the economic report which stated China had not played a role in the huge loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs even though America's trade deficit with that country has soared to $124 billion through November of last year. House Speaker Dennis Hastert was forced to make a statement contradicting the economist. Hastert said, quote, "I understand that Mr. Mankiw is a brilliant economic theorist, but his theory fails a basic test of real economics. An economy suffers when jobs disappear. Outsourcing can be a problem for American workers and for the American economy." unquote. Bush himself had to address the comments, stating that he was sympathetic to people who are unemployed. But, he said, the solution to the problem was to cut taxes and re-train workers. In his 2005 budget, though, Bush asked for little money for student aid programs, though he did call on students to take out larger loans.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&u=/ap/20040212/ap_on_go_pr_wh/white_house_jobs_2&printer=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/politics/12BBOX.html?pagewanted=all
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040212/pl_nm/bush_jobs_dc_6
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i23/23a00101.htm
Despite Economic "Recovery," Rich get Richer, Poor get Poorer
The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that most US workers saw their earnings fall or stagnate last year, with those at the bottom of the income scale hit hardest. The trend, coming alongside a slack job market, explains why many Americans feel left out of the economic recovery - and why President Bush faces a tough sell with his campaign-trail message that there is "good strong growth." Democratic rivals point to "two Americas," one for the rich, one for the poor. The gap between workers in the 90th earning percentile and the 10th has never been wider. The trend is not new, and according to Ann Owen, a former Federal Reserve economist in Washington, the factors leading to growing inequality are still present and she believes we can probably project a future growth in inequality. The growing gap persists even as the economy is growing, at a 8.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter of 2003 and a 4 percent rate in the fourth quarter. A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute finds that in 2003, earnings fell one tenth percent for workers in the very middle of American wage scale (the 50th percentile.) Wages fell even more, 1.2 percent, for the lowest-income full-time. For the wealthiest ten percent, the change in after-inflation earnings was upward: a 1.1 percent rise. The trend of widening wage gaps has been continuing, with few interruptions, since at least 1979. Today a worker in the richest ten percent earns $1,419 per week, nearly five times as much as a worker at the bottom of the scale. In 1979, it was 3.7 times as much.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0211/p03s01-usec.html
In the California grocery strike and lockout, a new corporate report had an unexpected effect. Safeway Inc., the owner of Vons and Pavilions, said Thursday that it lost $696 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, including $103 million because of the California supermarket strike. But rather than hurting the stock's price, the stock price went up because the strike's effect was less than Wall Street expected. The corporate CEO, Steven Burd, put an even more positive spin on the terrible economic report, telling analysts that the company's strike-related losses were decreasing as the dispute entered its fifth month with customers returning to the stores. The United Food and Commercial Workers immediately challenged the CEO's claims, saying that customer support for the workers remained strong. Michael Garland, an investment official with the AFL-CIO, said Safeway's figures showed that the strike "is a devastating hit to the company." Safeway released the report for its first full quarter since the dispute began as union and supermarket negotiators met for the second day under the auspices of a federal mediator. A spokesman for the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, said both sides bargained into the early evening Thursday and agreed to meet again Friday, saying that the agreement to negotiate was a very positive sign. Just one week ago, Safeway had refused to negotiate with the union. 70,000 workers in Southern California are involved in the dispute in an effort to defend health benefits and wages.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-safeway13feb13,1,1821205.story?coll=la-headlines-business
Nepal Children to Take up Cudgels Against Child Labor
To highlight the plight of over 2.6 million Nepalese children trapped in hazardous and exploitative jobs, child workers plan to send palm prints of more than 1,000 children to the World Congress on Child Labor to be held in Florence, Italy beginning on May 10. At a recent national conference on child labor in Nepal, the 12-year-old child worker representative Menu Thapa remarked that, quote "We are not safe in our households or in the street. There is an urgent need to take steps to eliminate child labor and protect us." unquote. While children in urban areas are subjected to various forms of labor, minors in villages are unsafe in their own neighborhood because of the Maoist insurgency. While those who migrate to urban areas are forced to work as domestic servants, porters, rag pickers, and bonded laborers in carpet factories, children in rural areas face the threat of being recruited as child soldiers by Maoist rebels. A study conducted with support from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF on the six worst forms of child labor says about 12,000 girls, including children, are trafficked every year while up to 200,000 are trapped in various brothels in India. In fact, 20 per cent of sex workers in Nepal are under 16. The alarming situation was revealed only after the first ILO survey in 1996, which revealed that 41.7 per cent of all children aged between five and 14 work regularly.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/fc/Business/labor_and_workplace/news_stories/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=655&e=5&u=/oneworld/20040211/wl_oneworld/4591789491076493243 |
See also:
http://www.labourstart.org
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