Older Workers:.Set Back by Recession, and Shut Out of Rebound

[eridani]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/booming/for-laid-off-older-workers-age-bias-is-pervasive.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2&

In September 2012, it appeared that the world was John Fugazzie’s frozen oyster. He was in charge of dairy and frozen foods for the A.&P. supermarket chain, making $125,000 a year.

He was also a guest that month at a White House forum on joblessness, in recognition of his work creating Neighbors-helping-Neighbors U.S.A., a volunteer networking organization with 28 chapters in New Jersey serving 1,200 unemployed, mainly white-collar, baby boomers. “John has one of the best volunteer organizations out there,” said Ben Seigel, a deputy director at the Labor Department. “He’s tireless and always upbeat.”

Lately Mr. Fugazzie has been feeling a little weary and beat down. One morning last October, just before his 57th birthday, he was laid off and, carrying a box of belongings from his office, driven home in a car service hired by the company. In the 10 months since, he has applied for more than 400 positions and had 10 interviews, but still has no job.

He and his family are living in his 88-year-old mother’s home, and last month he awoke at 4:30 a.m., sweating profusely, in the midst of a heart attack.

As happens to many Americans, when he lost his job, he lost his health insurance. He now owes $171,569.44 for the six nights he spent at the hospital.

[xchrom]

1. du rec.

[TheMastersNemesis]

2. Sadly Too Many Boomers And Other Workers Were Anti Union/Anti Labor Over The Years

There were a lot of boomers as well as others who apposed unions and labor laws and government intervention. Stronger anti age discrimination laws were never passed and the present law is a joke. I have felt for many years that age discrimination laws should have been part of the Affirmative Action laws and other anti discrimination laws that force companies to turn over their hiring records and forced them to prove they were NOT DISCRIMINATING.

We now see the result. Older workers are screwed.

[treestar]

3. When making 125K, they thought it meant they were

permanently on the "success" route.

The really interesting part is how the "experience" is apparently not worth anything on the market.

[TBF]

4. All workers are screwed -

but you are absolutely correct with your analysis.

Rec for the OP.

[mick063]

5. All workers are screwed

The South did it.

Not the boomers.


Since we are dividing into groups and laying blame.

One of many examples:

Where did Boeing relocate to?

[Rebellious Republican]

8. "The South did it" ?

You must have forgot to attach the sarcasm tag, right?

[LiberalEsto]

11. Darned right the South contrbuted to the situation,

with their "right-to-work" laws and offers of cheap, non-unionized labor that started the trend of companies laying off all their unionized workers and moving to southern states. Only the companies, in their greed for profits, didn't stop there - they kept moving, to Mexico and then China, Bangladesh and other poverty-wage countries.

[Rebellious Republican]

12. I see South Carolina held a gun to those Boeing executives heads and forced them to move down there.

So that in turn must have pissed Southern California off and they went up and held a gun to their heads and forced them set up shop in LONG BEACH. South Carolina, Southern California yep now I understand, they are both south of Seattle.



Boeing moving engineering work out of Washington
State will compete against other sites for future work

"Boeing is moving some design work for new commercial airplanes to South Carolina and Southern California, the company announced Friday."

"The only immediate impact on jobs in the Puget Sound region will be 300 positions moving to Southern California, Alder said."

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/boeing/article/Boeing-moving-engineering-work-out-of-Washington-4565734.php

[LiberalEsto]

14. They don't use guns, they use tax breaks

I was a newspaper reporter in NJ for many years, and saw first-hand plenty of "corporation-rustling" back when NJ towns were trying to lure businesses out of NYC. Towns would offer incentives - not just tax breaks, though these were often huge, but ease up on building permit requirements, look the other way at shoddy construction, pay for roads and utility installation instead of requiring incoming businesses to do so. They'd offer all kinds of grants and perks.

It was part of the challenge to bring what were called tax ratables into communities. The idea was that unlike residential developments, which require all sorts of human services and schools and other infrastructure, companies would bring jobs, take up undeveloped land and pay their (sometimes greatly reduced) taxes and not ask much beyond basic fire, police, etc.

Unfortunately this could backfire by giving so much to the companies that the towns didn't receive much in the way of taxes, so they raised residential property taxes. Companies brought all kinds of environmental hazards with them, and the towns either ignored them or got stuck with the cleanups. And once the temporary tax relief (usually 5 to 15 years) expired, the companies closed shop and moved south or out of the country. Because southern towns started offering companies tax breaks and other perks. And so on.

[Rebellious Republican]

17. I think it is all over the board as to where Manufacturing is moving to.

Reshoring manufacturing
Coming home

A growing number of American companies are moving their manufacturing back to the United States

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21569570-growing-number-american-companies-are-moving-their-manufacturing-back-united

[LiberalEsto]

18. Are these companies allowing unions and paying decent wages?

I've read about this trend too, but I have to say I'm suspicious of what kind of jobs they will create.

[Rebellious Republican]

19. Oh hell no, we both know that.

[eridani]

44. Boeing’s Wage-Slashing Move to SC Backfires as Company Can’t Meet 787 Production Demand

http://wepartypatriots.com/wp/2013/08/23/boeings-wage-slashing-move-to-sc-backfires-as-company-cant-meet-787-production-demand/

When Boeing left Washington for South Carolina in order to suppress the wages of its workers, it also left behind the quality work that had been provided by a highly skilled, union workforce. Now, that union-busting is backfiring as productivity has dropped immensely and Boeing is unable to meet their 787 Dreamliner production goals.

Via to the Puget Sound Business Journal:

Boeing’s South Carolina facility is running behind projections and won’t make its goal of producing three 787 Dreamliners a month by the end of 2013. In fact, the Everett plant will have to make up the difference in order for the company to reach its overall goal of 10 jetliners a month by year’s end.

As recently as July 24, when Boeing announced second-quarter earnings, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney insisted the company is on track to hit 10 Dreamliners monthly by the end of this year.
But how Boeing accomplishes that has become more problematic. Company executives have started saying that Boeing’s North Charleston, S.C., plant is somewhat behind its goal of contributing three 787s monthly by the end of 2013.

The cost savings associated with moving to South Carolina, where workers are paid nearly half of what workers in the Everett, WA plant make, are now for naught. The Everett plant will be counted on to make up the difference.

For Boeing, the news is only getting worse as one of their largest global competitors, Airbus, is looking to move to Washington state to build their new engineering center. Airbus Americas Chairman Allan McArtor explained the move:

We are attracted to Washington state for the same reason we were attracted to Wichita. That’s where the talent is,” he said. “If you want to have access to the talent that developed over the last 100 years of aviation, Washington is very fertile ground.”

[avaistheone1]

20. Correct. The right to work laws and the predominance of no minimum wage laws

there drove companies to go to the South. Just like cheap labor overseas is driving companies to offshore jobs.

[Mojorabbit]

30. I noticed the laying of blame also.

My husband just had a triple bypass this past Fri. The hospital cut us a huge deal or we would have had to probably declare bankruptcy. I have tremendous compassion for this man. He has probably worked hare his whole life, done everything right, was a volunteer and gave back to the community, and now here he is because of our shitty safety net. Screw the posters attempting to blame him. Look to corporate influence on our lovely elected officials instead.

[TheMastersNemesis]

33. I Believe Both Actually Contributed To The Situation.

Never totally understood why so many Southerners did not like unions, when many of them were so poor.

[raccoon]

34. As a Southerner who favors unions, I never understood that myself. I put it up to

brainwashing and/or ignorance.

[Dawson Leery]

39. Southern culture has spread thoughout the nation.

There was never a tradition of unity and civic activism in the south.

[LiberalEsto]

10. And there were plenty of us boomers who did support unions,

honor picket lines, and much more.

I was a proud member of what was then called the NY-NJ Newspaper Guild back in the late 70s, and served as treasurer of our local. I'm 61.

My husband successfully led a campaign to bring a union into a glass bottle-making company in NJ. He was harassed in every way possible, and was fired on some trumped-up excuse just before the union got voted in. He's 57.

Stronger age-discrimination laws were never passed because the corporations/rich succeeded in buying votes in Congress years ago. Reagan aided the decline of unions by firing the nation's air traffic controllers during the PATCO strike. And many southern states have long been enemies of unions.

You're right about older workers being screwed, though. I've been out of work for almost 5 years, finally gave up,and am now just waiting for early Social Security to kick in. My husband works long, crazy hours and weekends in the IT field. He would have loved to organize IT workers if he could have found enough willing to work on it, but the slightest hint of unionizing would have meant firing and blacklisting, while the companies outsourced their IT hiring to other cou8ntries. Which, of course, they did anyway.

[Rebellious Republican]

15. I am currently a proud Union Member, in the south no less!

[BlueJazz]

21. Excellent. I'm in the Musician's Union. (Worked for CBS in Studio). My Father was in the ...

...forgot the term..um.."Electrical Union"

He always told me: :"You work for Shit pay...They treat you like Shit pay"

[Rebellious Republican]

22. Loves me some Jazz!

Be it the Blue note, fusion, New Orleans or Chicago style.

[BlueJazz]

37. Music to my ears !

[LiberalEsto]

28. You mean the IBEW?

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers?

[BlueJazz]

35. That's it !

[etherealtruth]

16. The Boomers did it .... ?

I live in metro Detroit ... "all" the boomers were union members and watched their jobs move to the southern states

[avaistheone1]

23. It wasn't the boomers. It was Ronald Reagan and his war on unions and labor!!!!

.snip Reagan's war on labor began in the summer of 1981, when he fired 13,000 striking air traffic controllers and destroyed their union. As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson noted, that was "an unambiguous signal that employers need feel little or no obligation to their workers, and employers got that message loud and clear -- illegally firing workers who sought to unionize, replacing permanent employees who could collect benefits with temps who could not, shipping factories and jobs abroad."

Reagan gave dedicated union foes direct control of the federal agencies that were designed originally to protect and further the rights and interests of workers and their unions.

Most important was Reagan's appointment of three management representatives to the five-member National Labor Relations Board which oversees union representation elections and labor-management bargaining, They included NLRB Chairman Donald Dotson, who believed that "unionized labor relations have been the major contributors to the decline and failure of once-healthy industries" and have caused "destruction of individual freedom."

Under Dotson, a House subcommittee found,the board abandoned its legal obligation to promote collective bargaining, in what amounted to "a betrayal of American workers."

The NLRB settled only about half as many complaints of employers' illegal actions as had the board during the previous administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter, and those that were settled upheld employers in three-fourths of the cases. Even under Republican Richard Nixon, employers won only about one-third of the time.

Most of the complaints were against employers who responded to organizing drives by illegally firing union supporters. The employers were well aware that under Reagan the NLRB was taking an average of three years to rule on complaints, and that in any case it generally did no more than order the discharged unionists reinstated with back pay. That's much cheaper than operating under a union contract.

The board stalled as long before acting on petitions from workers seeking union representation elections and stalled for another year or two after such votes before certifying winning unions as the workers' bargaining agents. Under Reagan, too, employers were allowed to permanently replace workers who dared exercise their legal right to strike.

Reagan's Labor Department was as one-sided as the NLRB. It became an anti-labor department, virtually ignoring, for instance, the union-busting consultants who were hired by many employers to fend off unionization. Very few consultants and very few of those who hired them were asked for the financial disclosure statements the law demands. Yet all unions were required to file the statements that the law required of them (and that could be used to advantage by their opponents). And though the department cut its overall budget by more than 10 percent, it increased the budget for such union-busting activities by almost 40 percent.

Union-busting was only one aspect of Reagan's anti-labor policy. He attempted to lower the minimum wage for younger workers, ease the child labor and anti-sweatshop laws, tax fringe benefits, and cut back job training programs for the unemployed. He tried to replace thousands of federal employees with temporary workers who would not have civil service or union protections.

The Reagan administration all but dismantled programs that required affirmative action and other steps against discrimination by federal contractors, and seriously undermined worker safety. It closed one-third of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's field offices, trimmed its staff by more than one-fourth and decreased the number of penalties assessed against employers by almost three-fourths.

Rather than enforce the law, the administration sought "voluntary compliance" from employers on safety matters - and generally didn't get or expect it. The administration had so tilted the job safety laws in favor of employers that union safety experts found them virtually useless.

The same could have been said of all other labor laws in the Reagan era. A statement issued at the time by the presidents of several major unions concluded it would have been more advantageous for those who worked for a living to ignore the laws and return "to the law of the jungle" that prevailed a half-century before.

Their suggestion came a little late. Ronald Reagan had already plunged labor-management relations deep into the jungle.

http://www.dickmeister.com/id89.html

It is quite clear that President Ronald Reagan screwed the boomers, as well as set the stage to screw generations of labor to follow.

[LiberalEsto]

29. Thank you for posting this great information

I mentioned Reagan and the PATCO strike busting, but didn't remember details on how extremely destructive he and his handlers were to American unions. I think I worked too hard to block Ray-gun out of my memory as a horrible time. I forgot that it's important to see how things came about, so we can figure out ways to counteract and reverse them.

[bvar22]

24. The absence of leadership and support for LABOR from the Democratic Party..

..over the last 25 years is another contributing factor
along with pushing UNION Crushing "Free Trade" and "Free Markets".

[leveymg]

26. Safeway is a Union Store. It's the Walmarts and Food Lions that are the real problem.

[WCLinolVir]

6. What rebound.

[Alkene]

7. $125,000/yr?

Start a similar scenario at $30,000 and you'll start knowing the angst.

[Rebellious Republican]

9. Ding Ding Ding!

[Sunlei]

13. 28k a day for hospital!!!

[Mojorabbit]

32. Husband just discharged after 6 days and bypass surgery

Bill is just shy of $200,000 before we started negotiations with them.

[bvar22]

25. My Wife & I found ourselves in that position in 2005.

55+ is essentially "unemployable" in today's job market.
There are some exceptions for those with "connections",
but pounding the pavement looking for something better than entry level minimum wage is generally a waste of time.

We were fortunate to have some resources,
and decided to sell everything,
get out of the city
move to a rural area with a low Cost of Living
and buy Bubble Proof property in The Woods where we could grow our own food.

We found a "distressed" property and have invested our sweat & labor increasing its value instead of working for someone else for minimum wage.
So far, so good.
We are way ahead of where we would be had we stayed in The City
nursing dwindling resources and working low wage jobs just to survive.


---bvar22 & Starkraven
Living Well on a low Taxable income,
and stuff we learned in the 60s

[leveymg]

27. Some of us have negative equity in our underwater suburban homes, and can't move. :-(

At least not until they move us out into the street. Whatya gonna do?

[bvar22]

36. It is a desperate situation for most of us in this age group.

We were lucky, in a thousand different ways.

I spent a month in New Orleans immediately after Katrina in September, 2005.
That experience was a big factor in our decision.
We were able to get out just before the collapse of the Housing Market.
To this day, I believe that the disaster in New Orleans was the catalyst for the collapse of the Housing Market.

I don't know what the solution is,
but I know what it isn't.
We can NOT keep going in the direction we are heading.
The 1%ers are doing better than they EVER have,
but the Working Class and Poor fall further behind every single day.

It seems that we got plenty of MONEY for NEW WARS, more BOMBS,
and upgraded equipment for spying on American citizens,
but not enough for Meals-On-Wheels, Head Start, or Social Security.

That shit does NOT happen by accident.

[leveymg]

38. In old China, it was called "The Mandate of Heaven." Emperors who lost it, lost their heads.

The Mandate of Heaven (Chinese: 天命; pinyin: Tiānmìng) is a traditional Chinese philosophical concept concerning the legitimacy predicated on the conduct of the ruler in question. The Mandate of Heaven postulates that heaven (天; Tian) would bless the authority of a just ruler, as defined by the Five Confucian Relationships, but would be displeased with a despotic ruler and would withdraw its mandate, leading to the overthrow of that ruler. The Mandate of Heaven would then transfer to those who would rule best. The mere fact of a leader having been overthrown is itself indication that he has lost the Mandate of Heaven.

[bvar22]

41. That bears a frightening similarity with "The Family" doctrine (C Street).

"The Family" has a big bi-partisan influence over our elected representatives.

According the "The Family",
the RICH are RICH because god approves of them,
and thus the RICH have a mandate from god to Rule the World.
Over consumption and lavish lifestyles are Gifts from their God
because, as the god selected Leaders of the World, they "deserve" them
and it would be an offense to god if they didn't squander money while others are starving.[/font]

They actually believe that the above dogma entitles them to be a "Church",
and thus avoid paying taxes.

Bad stuff, but worse is to see a list of our elected representatives who subscribe to this modern day self/god-justification for not caring about anybody else.

[leveymg]

42. The Family are Calvinists - Confucianism is similar in some ways.

Both are very much about legitimizing dominance-submission and conserving social relationships in an environment of scarcity and great disparity in wealth with few rules upon the wealthy other than to survive as best they can. Confucism isn't so much a book of rules as a set of aphorisms and a philosophy of life.

It's interesting that there is a lineage that goes from Reform Protestantism (as a reaction to Czarist Absolutism) to post-Marxist-Leninism-Capitalist Oligarchism along with another line that springs out of Confucianist Dynastic Rule to Free Market Maoism. All a fascinating dialectical mix of seeming contradictions that happened, none-the-less.

We see similar contradictions in our own post-Capitalist social order.

[Hydra]

46. The Family is just dressing up might makes right

Or Divine Right of Kings more precisely.

The fact that this blatant royal/aristocracy movement hasn't been called out yet is scary. This is what the Founders were trying to get away from, and we're inviting it in the front door.

Good on you for getting out of the city trap and reducing your input into the Leviathan.

[noiretextatique]

40. i am going to do the same thing....but probably in central america

saving my cash and getting the hell out of dodge while i can.

[bvar22]

43. We took our "Leap of Faith" in 2005.

We still had hope in 2005/2006 that the Democratic Party would make a difference.
If we had that decision to make today we would probably leave the country.

Be careful about immigrating to Central America.
Go spend some time there looking around, talking to locals, talking to other Ex-Pats, and seeing what is really going on before investing any money.
There are lots of Sales Brochures with pretty pictures for property in Costa Rica, Panama, etc. that look & sound really great, but are scams.

Good Luck to you and yours!

[noiretextatique]

45. thank you...my friend did the scouting for me

she is already in guatemala. i am not sure if i will land there permanently, but at least i have a place to start. thanks for the advice. i will be 55 in december and i haven't felt this economically insecure since the reagan years.

[reformist2]

31. Age discrimination really needs to be dealth with. It really is a fundamental civil rights issue.

[ladyVet]

47. Poor guy.

Work hard all your life, strive for the "American Dream", and then get your ass handed to you. But hey, corporations are people now, and pay no taxes, we've got another war coming, so all is right with the world.

I'm 55, been out of work for five years. Not one interview, no "thanks, but no thanks". Nothing. I'm resigned to never having a "real" job again.

I can't do the kind of physical work I used to, can't even type for an office job due to arthritis and carpal tunnel. Not that I'd get one, as even the file clerk jobs now require a BA degree.

I've thought about getting out of the country, but it's not going to happen. The only place I can contemplate going to wouldn't have me. I just wish my sons would get some job skills that they could turn into immigration gold, and get the hell somewhere they won't have to suffer the downfall of this country.

[Triana]

48. Anyone over 50 is a sitting duck - just waiting to be shot down exactly like this.

"Too old" to get another job. Too young to retire.

The GOP's attitude? "You're just lazy and don't want to work! Drop dead, slacker!"