Posted on 11/23/2011 3:18:30 PM PST by mdittmar
Terry Maile’s supervisor called her into a conference room with all of her co-workers to hear the news: It was their last day of employment at Level 3 Communications in Pittsburgh.
That was it. The jobs were gone to India.
“I couldn’t stop crying,” said Maile, a divorced mother of one, who until that moment had spent her professional life as a telecommunications worker before being laid off first by Verizon and then by Level 3.
Even then, Maile said, she still believed in the American Dream.
You’ve got to work hard… work hard.
Maile owned her own home. Although she had been forced to liquidate her retirement after the Verizon layoff, she had begun to build it back up. Then came the Level 3 layoff. It shook her to her core.
That was my defining moment. I was filling out paperwork, and I couldn’t help it…. I was just crying and crying. I said, ‘They don’t understand…. We’re all interconnected.’
Ten years ago, back when Maile worked at Verizon, she earned $75,000 a year. At Level 3, she was paid $50,000. Today, she makes $8.50 an hour at a retail job. She applies for professional jobs every day. Sometimes her application is one of 400.
Maile, 58, plans to travel to Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks to raise her voice for benefits for the long-term unemployed. If Congress fails to act before leaving town for the year, benefits will expire for workers who have searched fruitlessly for jobs for more than 99 weeks. Some 6 million workers will stop receiving weekly compensation of about $300.
Maile plans to campaign constantly for jobless workers.
I had been blaming myself, until I realized what’s happening, until I learned more about corporate greed. And then I got active….There is a way out, for all of us, and it’s with collective action. We don’t have another choice. All of us need to stand together.
“And has been for going on 15 or 20 years now.”
For myself it’s more like over 50 years.
I ran the business for the sole purpose of profit, there is no other reason for a business to exist.
No one runs a business to give someone a job, only government is that stupid.
Of course jobs are going out of the country for a variety of reasons - currency exchange rate imbalance with China is one huge reason.
These reasons break down into two basic categories the first are external challenges and the second are internal obstacles.
Things like exchange rate imbalances with China are external challenges to economic growth that we face
Internal obstacles are barriers and shackles our country places on itself that destroy economic growth.
Big internal obstacles we face here are
1) A general anti business mentality on the part of government, especially with legal and product liability lawsuits. Sarbanes -Oxley killed a huge amount of big company investment and re investment in this country
2) Excessive regulation
3) Excessive labor and workplace laws which are abused.
4) Low employee productivity, eduction and learning skills. Poor employee work ethics
5) Unions adversarial mentality and insane work place policies.
6) Excessive taxation and social policy mandates on companies.
The hope of America is not to primarily to bring back obsolete jobs using obsolete technology that have been shifted oversea
The hope of America is to create and expand higher paying jobs producing innovative products or to produce existing products in a more efficient, innovative process.
To accomplish this we need a business climate where Americans will be willing to take the risks and make the capitol investments needed to implement the more efficient innovative processes.
We also need a flexible, talented,highly motivated, productive and hard working group of people to run the process.
As of right now, Government is a major obstacle to both
There is no balance in shipping work off to places where the conditions would never meet any of the standards we have in place here; the West is guaranteed to lose (and it IS losing).
Why anyone would defend a broken system that has destroyed our way of life is beyond me.
Our 2 current wars aren’t putting everyone back to work; technology has made a lot of those jobs disappear over the decades, and the costs of those wars have cost our dollar its value.
The threat of communism back then lead to reforms that made the “American dream” the envy of the world, and a magnet for the most talented people in it; today companies have learned how to avoid the reforms of the last 100 years, and we can see the result.
Perhaps unemployed Americans should be busy filling out employment applications.
Just a thought.
Simply because our so-called “leadership” have sold America to communist China, doesn’t mean we should stop trying.
Apply for jobs, every minute. Don’t ever quit.
Meanwhile, oppose the globalist traitors, with every fiber of your being.
America first.
It was...Most of those I knew that had lawn care service, gave it up due to lack of money, job loses, cuts in hours, price of food etc., etc. Same with pool services.
Right now I am employing an unemployed Engineer to do my lawn work for me. I am retired. He does a good job for a guy with such soft hands.
Annuities are not welfare. If increased tax hikes forced my 15% capital gains tax rate to rise I could stand it.
You just showed your ignorance to every investor on this board. I’ll bet you only invest in Gold Line. And that, only because some radio talk show bobble head tells you to. The same bobble heads that keep you a poor ignoramus and a lackey to a bunch of dual citizenship elite who look at you as though your worth is something they scrape off the bottom of their shoe after they step in it. Perhaps in your case they are right.
Why do you come on union threads defending unions? Why do you keep stealing the money from the taxpayers? Was your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck at birth? You hide behind your keyboard. Come on out and quit being such a coward.
Why do you come on union threads defending communists and communism? Why do you keep advocating sending our national wealth to a communist country that is antagonistic to us? Quit taking drugs and learn to think for your self. You hide behind your keyboard. Come on out and quit being such a coward...and such a commie sympathizer.
before OSHA regulations of the last couple of years....Nixon put OSHA in place, more than a couple of years ago.
Bye Bye Doofus. Enjoy the ozone.
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