Tag Archives: jobs

Income Inequality and Blinders

Posted on by
Reply

The impact of Obamacare, still being denied in some circles:

In January, nearly half of small-business owners with at least five employees, or 45% of those polled, said they had had to curb their hiring plans because of the health law, and almost a third—29%—said they had been forced to make staff cuts, according to a U.S. Bancorp survey of 3,173 owners with less than $10 million….

And

Given how much the President talks about income inequality, it is perhaps ironic that his signature achievement is preventing people from earning incomes.
…
ObamaCare-induced phenomenon of “29ers”—employees held below 30 hours of work per week to avoid counting as full-time workers eligible for employer-provided health insurance. As a Journal editorial explained last year, “The savings from restricting hours worked can be enormous. If a company with 50 employees hires a new worker for $12 an hour for 29 hours a week, there is no health insurance requirement. But suppose that worker moves to 30 hours a week. This triggers the $2,000 federal penalty. So to get 50 more hours of work a year from that employee, the extra cost to the employer rises to about $52 an hour—the $12 salary and the ObamaCare tax of what works out to be $40 an hour.

Hmm….

Paying the Vig

Posted on by
Reply

New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority has reached an agreement with the Transport Workers Union Local 100, the union representing the city’s 34,000 subway and bus employees. No news there. What’s interesting is a “side letter,” also agreed, about which both the MTA and the TWU carefully kept quiet.

A side letter of this sort is a separate deal that commits to paper the wink and nod that otherwise would represent an unspoken agreement that no one is supposed to know about, but that the winker and winkee reached on the q.t.

This particular side letter has the MTA paying, over the next three years, $6 million into a union slush fund “trust established for permissible purposes.”

The payments are being made “in the interests of sound labor relations.”

Of course.

The UAW and Its Volkswagen Union Vote Appeal

Posted on by
Reply

The UAW has, at the last minute, withdrawn its appeal to the NLRB of the vote it lost in Chattanooga concerning its attempt to unionize the Volkswagen plant there.  The UAW lost the vote despite having had the most favorable conditions for their side imaginable, including union representatives proselytizing in the plant during working hours while plant management was not allowed to counter-proselytize.

UAW President Bob King offered this as the rationale for the withdrawal:

The UAW is ready to put February’s tainted election in the rearview mirror and instead focus on advocating for new jobs and economic investment in Chattanooga.

Why does this not feel like an acceptance of reality, but rather that the union has something up its sleeve?  Or is my concern simply borne of the distrust created by the UAW’s routine mendacity in the past, and now my mistrust is misplaced: the union really is interested in cooperation rather than contention as the means of generating jobs?

Gary Casteel, responsible for the UAW’s southern region operations, in fleshing out King’s position,

called on Governor [Bill, R] Haslam to reinstate an offer of $300 million in economic incentives to Volkswagen.  The offer was suspended just before the union vote.

Hmm….

Unionizing College Football

Posted on by
Reply

The union argument for unionizing (Northwestern) college football goes like this, according to the College Athletes Players Association:

…the hours athletes spend practicing, the rights they give up to keep their scholarships, and the possible revocation of those scholarships should they break team rules.

Let’s see how this works for students on academic scholarships:

…the hours students spend studying, the rights they give up to keep their scholarships, and the possible revocation of those scholarships should they break academic rules.

Are these students employees of the school and not students getting a college-funded break toward their college educations?

But wait, you say—what about the football team walk-ons, those who try out for the team and make it but aren’t awarded athletic scholarships?  They’re to be allowed to join the union, as they’re employees of the school, too, according to the NLRB ruling.

Let’s see how that plays out for students who are academic walk-ons, those who apply to the school and are admitted but aren’t awarded academic scholarships.  Are these folks employees of the school, too?

Hmm….

Obama’s War

Posted on by
Reply

…on women and on minorities in general continues apace.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour would kill off 500,000 jobs…57% of those jobs are held by women.

Women would be disproportionately harmed: those 57% work out to a loss of 285,000 jobs for women.  I suppose, though, that given this administration’s current buzz, President Barack Obama and his coterie view this as a general good.

Obama’s war is just as devastating on other groups of Americans whom his mouth holds in high favor, but his actions plainly disdain.  The Employment Policies Institute has some of the sordid details.

  • For every 10% increase in the minimum wage, teen employment at small businesses is estimated to decrease by 4.6%-9.0%
  • For every 10% increase in the minimum wage, young black and Hispanic teen employment, in particular, looks to fall 4.9%-8.4%

Hmm….