Tag Archives: jobs

Economic Gains

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President [Barack] Obama used Labor Day to tout the country’s economic gains under his leadership….

Let’s look at those gains.

  • he’s increased the national debt in his six years by 70%—it stood at $10 trillion at the end of 2008; it’s now over $17 trillion
  • median income has fallen—it stands now at $53,900 compared with $56,700 in December 2007 at the start of the current economic dislocation
  • job creation is only just back to pre-Panic levels, 6 years into his administration, compared with normal economic recovery needing only 2-3 years to get to this point
  • unemployment rate now stands at 6.2%, dropping 1.1 points over the past year—still 20% above full employment, and again years behind schedule
  • labor force participation rate is at an historic low
  • GDP growth remains anemic at 1.5%-2.5% year on year (with this year’s growth rate projected to be in the 2.5% range) compared to a normal economic recovery growth rate in the 4.5%-6.5% range.

And this graph sums it all up:RecoveryComparison_Cox

Obama, in the same appearance, also claimed that “higher wages and other progress for workers can only be achieved through a Democrat-controlled Congress.”

Really? Can our country afford more of this Progressive progress?

Obamacare and Jobs

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The results are starting to come in, via three independently done polls by three separate Federal Reserve Banks.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia:

  • 78.8% of businesses in the district have made no change to the number of workers they employ as the specific result of ObamaCare
  • 3% are hiring more
  • 18.2% are cutting jobs and employees
  • 18% shifted the composition of their workforce to a higher proportion of part-time labor
  • 88.2% of the roughly half of businesses that modified their health plans as a result of ObamaCare passed along the costs through increasing the employee contribution to premiums, an effective cut in wages

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York asked about the “number of workers you employ.”

  • 21% of Empire State manufacturers and 16.9% of service firms answered “reducing.”

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta:

  • 34% of businesses planned to hire more part-time workers than in the past, mostly because of a rise in the relative costs of their full-time colleagues

And the pièce de résistance:

  • ObamaCare’s labor effects would be concentrated in some industries with relatively low-wage or marginal workers.

Hmm….

Social Guarantees

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Ilan Brat and Giada Zampano wrote, in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, about job protections and their effects on the prospects of today’s children and young adults in Europe. The whole article is well worth the read for its specifics, but from my perspective, the following is the money quote, from one of those young adults, Ms Serena Violano, a 31-year-old still sharing a room with her older sister in their parents’ home:

For our parents, everything was much easier. They had the opportunity to start their own life. Instead, we don’t have any guarantees for our own future.

Therein lies the core of the failure of “social democracy.” There are no guarantees. There never were any guarantees, for Ms Violano’s parents or for anyone of that generation. Those of Ms Violano’s parents’ generation made their own futures, with no expectation that anyone, least of all government, would guarantee them anything but the freedom of their own choices and efforts. They had no other expectations because they knew that government could make no other guarantees.

The well-intentioned guarantees of social democracy, including the labor “guarantees” of which Brat and Zampano wrote, in the end can only destroy what they purport to guarantee.

A Precious Union

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The Metropolitan Opera singers union resumed contract talks on Monday after a two-month hiatus, but union officials said they had little hope of reaching an agreement before a threatened lockout.

And no wonder, with such an awesome sense of entitlement.

“He doesn’t want to help us maintain our instruments,” said chorus member Jean Braham, commenting on the effect [Met General Manager Peter] Gelb’s proposed high-deductible health plan could have on singers’ voices and bodies.

“We are the artists,” Ms Braham said, her voice cracking. “We are the product. The fact that he accepts no responsibility and no accountability is just incredible to me.”

They are your instruments, Ms Braham, not the Met’s. Like any worker, your tools are your own responsibility. And, no, you are not the product. Get over yourself. The entertainment that the Met produces—blending your tools with those of the major singers, those of your company’s dancers, those of the orchestra, those of your company’s stage managers, and the acoustics of the opera house stage and setting are the product.

What’s incredible to me is that your sense of entitlement has become so ingrained that you view all of this as your natural right. How precious can a union worker get?

Another Reason

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…to disband the NLRB.

McDonald’s Corp could be treated as a joint employer with its franchisees in labor complaints, according to a National Labor Relations Board legal determination….

The relationship between a franchisee and the parent franchisor varies in the details of the franchise contract. However, the general nature of the reputation is quite limited. The franchisee gets to use the franchisor name and the franchisor’s marketing and accounting assistance, and it gets the franchisor’s market power in holding down the cost of supplies. In return, the franchisee is bound to the franchisor’s rules regarding the use to which the franchise name is put and the nature, quality, and standardization of the product being sold. The franchisee also is required to refrain from activities that would result in denigration of the franchise name.

There’s nothing in there concerning hiring or employment practices, or anything else involving labor decisions, that tie the franchisor to the franchisee. Existing labor law covers the franchisee’s hiring and employment.

The NLRB knows this, of course, which makes its ruling even more pernicious.