Sunday, December 4, 2011

China Rejects U.S. Ruling on Solar Imports

China said a preliminary ruling by a U.S. trade panel that imports of Chinese solar panels are harming the domestic industry shows the country’s “inclination to trade protectionism.”
The U.S. International Trade Commission on Dec. 2 took the first step toward imposing added tariffs on Chinese solar imports, voting unanimously in Washington on a petition by Bonn- based SolarWorld AG (SWV) that called for antidumping and countervailing duties. The commission will now hold a full investigation.
“The ruling was made without sufficient evidence showing U.S. solar panel industry has been harmed,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on its website yesterday. The decision was taken “regardless of defense opinions from Chinese firms, as well as opposition from the U.S. domestic industries and other stakeholders, which prominently shows the U.S.’s strong inclination to trade protectionism and for which China is deeply concerned.”
The Chinese government uses cash grants, raw-materials discounts, preferential loans, tax incentives and currency manipulation to boost exports of solar cells, according to SolarWorld’s Oct. 19 complaint to the ITC and the U.S. Commerce Department. SolarWorld, a maker of solar modules, is seeking duties to offset the practices.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

US jobs report: No relief from mass unemployment

The US employment report for November, released Friday by the Labor Department, was hailed by the Obama White House as a significant improvement. In fact, the report shows that the US economy remains mired in mass unemployment, with conditions deteriorating for employed and unemployed workers alike.
The survey concluded that the US economy recorded a net gain of 120,000 jobs last month, below the number of new jobs needed to keep pace with the monthly growth of the population. Previous post-recession recoveries typically saw monthly payroll gains of 200,000–300,000.
The Labor Department revised upward its earlier figures for job growth in September and October, adding a total of 72,000 jobs for the two months. The October figure was raised from 80,000 to 100,000 and the September figure from 158,000 to 210,000.
While the official unemployment rate fell from 9 percent for October to 8.6 percent for November, the drop was largely due to a mass exodus of long-term unemployed and discouraged workers from the labor force. Unemployed workers who have not looked for a job for more than a month are not considered part of the labor force. Thus the staggering labor force decline of 315,000 last month is a more accurate reflection of the social impact of protracted mass unemployment than a net job gain nearly 200,000 lower than the labor force contraction.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Health Care for a Changing Work Force

Big institutions are often slow to awaken to major social transformations. Microsoft was famously late to grasp the importance of the Internet. American auto manufacturers were slow to identify the demand for fuel-efficient cars. And today, the United States government is making a similar mistake: it still doesn’t seem to recognize that Americans no longer work the way they used to.
Today, some 42 million people — about a third of the United States work force — do not have jobs in the traditional sense. They fall into a catchall category the government calls “contingent” workers. These people — independent contractors, freelancers, temp workers, part-timers, people between jobs — typically work on a project-to-project basis for a variety of clients, and most are outcasts from the traditional system of benefits that provide economic security to Americans. Even as the economy has changed, employment benefits are still based on an outdated industrial-era model in which workers are expected to stay with a single company for years, if not their whole careers.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/health-care-for-a-changing-work-force/

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Boehner Sees ‘Hell of a Lot Worse’ Economy Without Deficit Deal

House Speaker John Boehner today warned that the U.S. economy will get “a hell of a lot worse” if Congress fails to address the country’s long-term debt woes, but he acknowledged that Republicans and Democrats must “find more common ground if we’re going to be successful.”
“I’m never going to give up on making the changes necessary to get our deficit and our debt under control because if we don’t the future for our kids and grandkids is going to be pretty bleak,” Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters today in Washington. “If you look at what happened with the supercommittee, it’s not a whole lot different than what happened in the conversations between President Obama and myself and Senator Reid and Senator McConnell and myself later in the summer.  There’s got to be a balance to this if it’s going to happen, [but] both of our views of what is balanced still have room between us.”

Sunday, October 30, 2011

For real change, Occupiers must reject Obama


There’s only one way the Occupy Wall Street movement can become like the tea parties, and that’s for Barack Obama to lose in 2012. Why? Because Obama is the most divisive figure in American politics today.
I suspect that sentence reads funny to some people because in the mainstream press, “divisive” is usually a term reserved for “conservatives we disagree with.” But as a factual matter it can apply to anybody who is, well, divisive.
Obviously, Obama divides the right and left. That’s not all that interesting or relevant (even if it does represent a failure to live up to his “one America” rhetoric from 2008). But Obama also divides everyone else. Independents, whom he desperately needs to win re-election, are split over Obama, with the bulk siding with Republicans.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1376923

Pro-Union Is Not Pro-Worker


A recurring theme from the current administration is that to be pro-organized labor is to be pro-worker.  Concurrently, the administration has consistently refuted that it is using class warfare as a theme.
For Joe Biden to incorrectly and belligerently suggest that being pro-union means being pro-worker is pure flawed logic.  He obviously has never worked as a supplier to a large union company or worked as an employee in a company supplying a union company.
A comment from Vice President Biden in March 2011 summed it up when he stated, "We don't see the value of collective bargaining; we see the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining.  Let's get something straight: the only people who have the capacity -- organizational capacity and muscle -- to keep, as they say, the barbarians from the gate, is organized labor.  And make no mistake about it: the guys on the other team get it.  They know if they cripple labor, the gate is open, man.  The gate is wide open.  And we know that, too."
In my experiences helping groups avoid bankruptcy, the tier-1 and tier-2 suppliers to the auto industry and their employees, many of whom are UAW members as well, have suffered horribly at the hands of the big three (GM, Chrysler, and Ford) and the big one (the UAW).     
The suppliers to the auto industry have seen prices cut and wages slashed for their workers with the result that America has lost even more jobs overseas to help pay for the contract settlements with the auto manufacturers.  The loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States has even caused the UAW membership itself to plummet from 1.5 million members in 1979 to about 355,000 in 2010, yet the union fails to acknowledge its role in the decline of its own membership.   
The most recent labor negotiation with the UAW is concerning because of the impact it will have on workers at the suppliers to the big 3 or to the car buyers if prices are raised to pay for this contract.  After a taxpayer-funded bailout and substantial write-off of debt by GM and Chrysler, the auto company employees will reap bonuses and benefits unheard of in the rest of America in this current economic climate.  Class warfare at its finest!
While one might concede that it is wonderful to provide such benefits if you can afford them, those benefits can be paid only if, ultimately, the  customer is willing to pay a higher price for your product.  
Should the customer not want to pay a higher price, such bonuses and benefits must come from suppliers, the suppliers employees, shareholders (pension plans in many cases), and government.
The greed of this most recent labor negotiation in the middle of a recession/depression is palpable.  The sheer arrogance and abuse of power by the industry and its union reminds me of someone silly enough to fly to Washington, D.C. in a private jet to ask for a bailout -- not that anyone would be silly enough to do that.

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