Double dip or just a long slow climb out of recession some job conditions are likely to remain in place. Problems faced by hourly, low-level workers and others struggling to make ends meet on reduced or uncertain hours are unlikely to go away as the recession ends. The extended period of high unemployment has driven down wages for some low skilled outsourced services. It was reported that some outsourced jobs, such as call centers have become as cheap to fill in the US as in India.
An AARP bulletin based on recent bureau of labor statistic says The number of people working less than they would like, due to their hours being cut back or their inability to find a full-time job, held steady at about 8.6 million.
In addition to being susceptible to reduced, irregular and fluctuating hours, hourly and part time workers are sometimes not eligible for employee benefits from employers. Part-time workers may not receive unemployment benefits when laid off.
“Certainly the current recession is contributing to underemployment, as evidenced by the proportion of American workers classified as ‘involuntary part-time,’”
said Susan Lambert and Julia Henly in their forthcoming paper, “Work Schedule Flexibility in Hourly Jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions.
”. The Census Bureau uses the term for those who work less than 35 hours a week because they could not find a full-time job or those who work reduced hours due to “slack demand.” In November 2009, 9.2 million workers fell in this category, the highest level in recorded history
People are talking about it. A series of four regional forums are planned this Fall by the White House on the issue of workplace flexibility in low wage and manufacturing sectors.
Researchers Henly and Lambert expect the needs of workers for stable adequate hours and benefits will be discussed.
An increasingly large part of the work force has a stake in these job issues.
Unity PicToday we announced that I will be embarking on a United Vision for Vermont Tour with the 4 other Democratic gubernatorial candidates on Tuesday, September 7. Over the course of 2 days we will criss-cross the state highlighting our unified vision to get Vermonters back to work and continue to make Vermont a great place to live, build a business and raise a family. Please come join us at any of the below stops!
Schedule of stops is here. Stops include St Albans, Rutland, Shelburne, Bennington on the 7th and then on the 8th, Brattlebor, WRJ and Montpelier.
A sixty-four-year-old California resident named Peter McFarland fell and injured his leg on his way into his home. His wife called paramedics, who arrived, treated him and left. He happened to jokingly remark to them that he was in so much pain that if he had a gun he would just shoot himself. Shortly afterward Marin County Sheriffs arrived and entered his home uninvited.
Although he explained that he was in pain and the remark was hyperbole, the sheriffs attempted to force him to go to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. McFarland and his wife can be seen in the disturbing seven-minute video (filmed by a deputy) repeatedly asking them to leave. Totally fed-up and angry, he finally tried to leave his living room and was tasered three times.
He is now suing the county.
The Sheriff's department defended their actions stating, "the decision to resort to the use of force is never taken lightly."
Vermont is not immune to taser incidents: in March of this year a homeless person was tasered in Barre in an incident that is 'under investigation.'
And in 2009 the State of Vermont paid an out of court settlement of $40,000.00 for a State Police tasing incident that took place in 2006.
Presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Peter Shumlin and other Democratic leaders, including Sen. Doug Racine, will begin a Unity Tour across the state in St. Albans Tuesday. They will start from Cosmic Bakery on Main St. in St. Albans, hosted there by Franklin County State Senate candidate Mike McCarthy (Hey, that's me.).
I'm really excited by this opportunity and I want to invite anyone who is interested to come and join us in a show of support for our candidates. We must beat B-Dubs in November! They are slated to be at Cosmic (30 S. Main Street) from 10am-11am on Tuesday morning.
Other events will be announced across the state, so please get out and support the Dems when they are in your neighborhood.
Having just read about Brian Dubie's plan to redirect federal funds intended to support education into a property tax boondoggle, I received with great interest the latest news that, Senators Leahy and Feingold are introducing two bills to reform the notoriously underfunded and ill-conceived "No Child Left Behind." A legacy of the Bush years, "No Child Left Behind" has only succeeded in obscuring the very real issues that public education faces in a world of dwindling resources and growing need.
According to a press release:
The Improving Student Testing Act would:
o Increase competitive grant funds for states to create higher-quality, authentic measurements of student performance. Examples include computer-based adaptive tests and innovative performance-based tests that can incorporate formats like science experiments and written essays and that require students to demonstrate their knowledge.
o Clarify that existing federal funds for assessments can be used to develop better assessments and train teachers in the use of those assessments.
The Flexibility and Innovation in Education Act would:
o Reform NCLB's testing mandates and reduce its focus on high stakes testing.
o Provide states and local districts with more power over the day-to-day decisions in classrooms by allowing states to use multiple measures of student achievement in classrooms in addition to reading and math tests and provide states with the flexibility to lessen the testing burden in their schools.
o Revise the one-size-fits-all approach and provide states with flexibility to develop alternative accountability models such as growth models where schools receive credit for the growth students make throughout the academic school year.
o Improve the Department of Education's peer review process to ensure states have the ability to interact directly with peer review teams.
o Include important measures to help ensure the privacy of students' personal information contained in state education data systems.
(Crossposted at Huffington Post, where nobody reads this kinda airy, esoteric crap either...)
It wasn't the collective gasp, followed by the sigh of relief I expected. Instead, the response among those I spoke with to the news of another oil rig disaster in the gulf, along with the follow-up report that its impact appeared to be minimal, was something more akin to a collective deer-in-the-headlights episode. Casual observers - as well as the media - seemed not to know what to do with the news.
Call it "disaster saturation," perhaps, but the response was strangely dulled - almost slack-jawed. Not in an apathetic or disinterested way, but in a way that suggested a profound sense of powerlessness and confusion, and maybe just a hint of fatalistic resignation. "Now what?" seemed to be the message in the eyes of my neighbor.
Doug Hoffer is fully engaged in his campaign against the hapless Tom Salmon; and he isn't sparing Brian Dubie any slack either:
"It is disingenuous to talk about Vermont's 'income tax' for the simple reason that Vermont does not have one income tax," Hoffer wrote, in a press statement. "It has a progressive tax system so residents pay at very different rates depending on their income. I am certain Mr. Dubie knows this so it makes me wonder why he would use such language."
Dubie's recent claim that Vermonter's income tax rate is higher than that of Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island is just plain misleading, says Hoffer. As evidence, he offers a breakdown of income tax in Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts (excluding RI, for which equivalent information was not available), which demonstrates that, for instance, a married homeowner with two kids who earns $80,743. pays roughly half as much in income tax as he/she would in either Maine or Massachusetts.
In the world of facts and figures that the Auditor's role entails, Tom Salmon must be having serious misgivings about his relationship to the vaporous Mr. Dubie who's oddly disloyal mantra of "Vermont is bad for business" adds little luster to his own weak performance on the job.
Predictably, promoters of Brian Dubie's agenda have seized on the ISO-New England statements about Vermont Yankee's withdrawal from the power auction, to do a little campaign cover-shot. It's no longer possible to link to the editorial content of the St. Albans Messenger, so you will just have to take my word for it that Emerson Lynn's Sept. 1 editorial is all over this opportunity. Get this:
...understandably, the other states in the region cant' be too happy about it. They are already beginning to talk about how the cost should not be borne by them, but by Vermont. If we cause the problem (deny the company its license) then Vermont should share more of the burden in making sure the energy source is replaced.
He goes on...and on...and finally gets to the point of lambasting Peter Shumlin for his opposition to relicensing.
Here is my e-mailed response to Mr. Lynn:
'Looks like another election year fact-check is in order when it comes to the ISO-New England and Vermont Yankee. In your September 1 editorial, you refer to the ISO as "independent." Even though it may be independent of control by any single power supplier, it is nevertheless a vehicle of the energy market as a whole, and so represents the interest of all the companies that supply power in New England. To imply that the ISO is entirely independent of Entergy is therefore somewhat disingenuous.
The ISO's clucking over the possibility that Vermont Yankee soon will not be part of the configuration of power suppliers to New England as a whole is kind of like an entity representing "big dairy" scolding Vermont for wanting to protect it's small dairy farms. As the coordinating arm of an industry dominated by big power corporations, it is unsurprising that they would take a dim view of replacing a plant operated by one of their constituents with alternative sources. If the ISO is indeed suggesting that Vermont should bear more of the burden of replacing the megawatts lost from the grid when VY goes off-line, the idea is absurd. Vermont has hosted Vermont Yankee for forty years, while consuming only a very small portion of its output. For forty years, the state has absorbed all of the risk of hosting the plant on its soil; and when it's gone, we will be the state that must cope with a long-term clean-up issue of unknown proportions.
ISO's sabre-rattling is most unbecoming, and if Brian Dubie is foolish enough to pick-up this line of argument in his campaign for governor, he can well expect that Vermonters will consider this disloyalty rather worse than what was displayed in his recent banner ads announcing that Vermont is in 47th place as one of the least friendly places in which to do business in the United States.
(Good to hear from another candidate - promoted by JulieWaters)
This is my first post at GMD so let me introduce myself- I'm Mike McCarthy, candidate for State Senate (Democrat, Franklin County/Alburgh)
Sue Prent was in my bakery/cafe today (Cosmic in St. Albans) and suggested I get more involved in the GMD scene. I love reading the posts here, and I find that the commentary reinforces my world-view in a way that helps me understand why the R's love Fox News so much.
I'm running for the State Senate because I am excited by the opportunities we have in the next session, and I'm not terrified of the budget challenges we face.
My small business struggled to a start in 2008, when things were starting to go bust all over America. Now Cosmic employs me and two other staff full time as well as five to eight part-time staff with more planned for next year as we expand. None of us are getting rich (yet) but we make (and eat) good food and we can the pay the rent! Who wants a cupcake?
I want to bring energy and long-term vision to Montpelier and bring back better state government for my neighbors. I recognize that we won't have grid parity overnight and that a single payer health care bill will take a movement to push it through, but I'm willing to fight for a greener, healthier Vermont. I hope you'll join me!
The Northeast Kingdom has lost another young soldier to war.
Yesterday, in Hardwick, Sgt. Tristan Southworth was laid to rest with full military honors, following his funeral, which was attended by about 1400 people, at Hazen Union School, from where he had graduated in 2007 after joining the Guard in 2006. Tristan was a three-sport standout athlete. He was promoted to sergeant posthumously and awarded a Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and Combat Infantryman Badge for his service.
Southworth, 21, of Walden, died Aug. 22 while trying to rescue a fellow soldier in a prolonged gun battle with insurgents who had attacked his unit using small arms and rocket propelled grenades in Paktika Province, about 12 miles west of the border with Pakistan.
In Tristan's own words:
(Here he speaks of a Congressional Medal of Honor received by his cousin, a medic in Vietnam killed throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of soldiers around him.)
"This is important to me because of what it means. My cousin got this award for jumping on a grenade and saving his fellow men while operating on them in Vietnam. He was one of the few medics to achieve this award during that conflict. I don't have and respect for any person higher than the respect I have for him."
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, sed dulcius pro patria vivere, et dulcissimum pro patria bibere. Ergo, bibamus pro salute patriae."
Godspeed, young sergeant. Thank you for your service.
Doug Hoffer is fully engaged in his campaign against the hapless Tom Salmon; and he isn't sparing 
The Northeast Kingdom has lost another young soldier to war.
