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Link only - Failure to Raise U.S. Debt Cap Seen Idling 800,000 Workers

Contractor Don Pedro — like farmers across Georgia — is worried that the state's tough new immigration law is scaring away an illegal immigrant workforce. Reporting from Wray, Ga. — It was a Tuesday afternoon at the height of blackberry season, and the Paulk family farm was short 100 pickers. It was Don Pedro's job to find them. The Georgia Department of Agriculture this month released a survey of farmers who said they needed to fill more than 11,000 positions lasting from one day to a year. Critics of U.S. farming practices have long said Americans would take such jobs...

Economy: President Obama says he wants businesses to "step up" and hire more. If he's really sincere about wanting more jobs, he should stop demonizing and punishing American corporations for their success. 'Companies ... (are) making a lot of money," President Obama told a town hall meeting Thursday, "and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products." But the fact they're not "betting" more isn't their fault. It's Obama's — and his Democrat allies in Congress. Their tax-and-spend policies have pushed our nation to the brink of financial ruin, creating uncertainty and an unstable...

Cleveland, OH - The Cleveland Municipal School District, scratching for every penny, could use the nearly $5 million paid to employees who have retired since last summer. Records show that 269 employees cashed in that amount of accumulated vacation and sick leave since the fiscal year started July 1. Topping the list are two administrators who each collected about $83,000, one after working in the system for four years. Nearly 70 percent of the employees picked up at least $10,000 in what the district calls severance; more than 40 percent received $20,000 or more.

Federal Rights For State Workers UpheldPublished on April 01, 2011 by Staff Reporter CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (USA) A U.S. district court judge has ruled states cannot pass laws that limit private-sector workers' rights to negotiate job terms, a union attorney said. "The state can't legislate workers' rights," said attorney Terrance McGann, who represented the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters in a case challenging a 2010 law in Illinois intended to allow exhibitors at Chicago's McCormick Place convention hall to bypass paying overtime, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday. Judge Ronald Guzman's ruling upholding the National Labor Relations Act on behalf of the...

ALBANY - Being governor may be the top gig in state government, but it certainly doesn't pay that way. Nearly 1,000 state employees made more than the governor's $179,000 salary last year, the Empire Center for New York State Policy found."As a taxpayer, I'd be interested in less people making more than my governor, not more," said Empire Center director Tim Hoefer.SUNY Binghamton basketball coach Kevin Broadus topped the charts with more than $1 million in a settlement with the university to end his scandal-plagued tenure.

GOP targets salaries, 'offensive' bonuses of federal workersBy Erik Wasson - 03/09/11 08:50 PM ET Cost-cutting House Republicans on Wednesday made it clear that they are eyeing the salaries of federal workers. And they don’t like what they see. During a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing, panel Chairman Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) noted that “federal employees on average earned $101,628 in total compensation in 2010, nearly four times more than the average private-sector worker.” He argued President Obama’s two-year pay freeze for federal workers, enacted in December, “wasn’t really a freeze” because it did not include all increases. He...

The Federal Times calls it a “steel cage match” in which “two wonks enter, one wonk leaves.” Congressional hearings are never that exciting, but Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on federal pay does promise some spirited debate. At issue is how the federal government pays its civilian workers—and, more importantly, whether it pays them too much. Leaders of the Office of Personnel Management and National Treasury Employees Union will confront critics of federal pay for the first time in public. Those critics – “in the red corner” as the Federal Times puts it – are Heritage’s James Sherk and Andrew...

Indian police detained two people after an angry mob of fired workers burned to death a senior executive of a steel factory, an official said Friday. After learning they were laid off, about a dozen workers attacked a vehicle carrying Radhey Shyam Roy as he was leaving the factory in eastern Orissa state on Thursday, dousing the Jeep with gasoline and setting it on fire, said police Superintendent Ajay Kumar Sarangi. Two other people in the vehicle were allowed to flee but Roy, 59, was trapped inside and later died of severe burns, Sarangi said. Police were questioning two workers...

Federal Workers Thrive Without Collective BargainingBy Chris Stirewalt Published March 01, 2011 FoxNews.com When the president of the United States takes time to denounce a single bill in a state legislature as an “assault on unions,” one might be forgiven for thinking it contains some groundbreaking stuff. But, in fact, the controversial plan in Wisconsin and similar legislation in Ohio, Tennessee and elsewhere would in many ways treat state workers the same as employees of the federal government. For all of the thunder we’ve heard from the president and his party about union busting, what’s been proposed is more akin...

Global Economy? 23 Facts Which Prove That Globalism Is Pushing The Standard Of Living Of The Middle Class Down To Third World Levels From now on, whenever you hear the term "the global economy" you should immediately equate it with the destruction of the U.S. middle class. Over the past several decades, the American economy has been slowly but surely merged into the emerging one world economic system. Unfortunately for the middle class, much of the rest of the world does not have the same minimum wage laws and worker protections that we do. Therefore, the massive global corporations that...

At the top of Saturday's CBS Early Show, co-host Russ Mitchell cheered unions protests across the country: "Workers uniting. 50 rallies are planned in 50 states today, as organizers show solidarity with Wisconsin state workers, fighting to preserve their right to collectively bargain for benefits and work conditions." Introducing the segment later, fellow co-host Rebecca Jarvis noted how the protests were organized by MoveOn.org. Rather than accurately label the organization as left-wing, she simply referred to it as "an advocacy group."

Back in the 1970s my daughters used to say: "Let's play princesses!" and a grand old time they had. I imagine that in progressive families, the cry was different. "Let's play community organizers!" No doubt a grand old time was had by the baby radicals too. The trouble is that some people don't grow up. It's one thing to play community organizers in the back yard when you are a kid. It's another thing when real lives are at stake, as in Wisconsin. A better name for "community organizer" is "radical suit," because community organizers are really the lefty version...

The fast track to workers' comp: Thousands have been paid to those with just a doctor's noteBY BETH HUNDSDORFER AND GEORGE PAWLACZYK - News-Democrat Sunday, Feb. 06, 2011 A state, municipal or private worker can get thousands of tax-free dollars through workers' compensation based primarily on a doctor's note. All that is needed is a report stating the claimant has a wrist condition known as carpal tunnel syndrome or cubital tunnel syndrome, which can affect the elbow. Surgery or treatment of any kind is not required. A lawyer isn't needed. And the public won't know anything about it until the...

The Republican leader of the Wisconsin state Senate says there will be no vote on a bill taking away union rights for government workers until Democrats return. ... A handful of Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin seemed to hold one of few paths to a compromise that could end a high-stakes stalemate over union rights that has captured the nation's attention.

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Productivity gains mean many low-skilled workers are shut out The U.S. manufacturing sector is roaring back after the worst recession in generations. So why aren’t factory jobs coming back as quickly? One big reason: Business executives like Drew Greenblatt, owner of Baltimore-based Marlin Steel Wire Products, have figured out how to make more widgets with the same number of workers. To do so, he's had to upgrade the skills — and wages — of his employees. But his profits are bigger than ever.

Lockdown, pay up January 17, 2011 Here's something to digest with your big new Illinois income tax increase: You would assume that the Menard Correctional Center is a dangerous place to work. It does, after all, hold violent prisoners. You probably wouldn't assume that the biggest injury risk for the guards is locking and unlocking the doors. Or that this is costing you a lot of money. Illinois has paid out at least $10 million over the last three years in workers' compensation claims to employees at the southern Illinois prison. Much of the money has gone to corrections officers...

On Friday, the President wasted no time informing the country that unemployment rates had dropped from 9.8 to 9.4%. That sounds pretty good, until you dig into the underlying numbers. Then it sounds dire. Despite expectations that the U.S. would add 170,000 new jobs, only 100,000 were added in December. And yet the unemployment rate fell by .4%, a feat that would normally require the addition of up to 750,000 new jobs. How could the rate fall so dramatically with job gains of only 100,000? Normally, an increase of 100,000 jobs would not even absorb the number of new entrants...

From the New York Times on Thursday, in an item put together with the help of a half-dozen Times reporters ("Inaction and Delays by New York as Storm Bore Down"): ... Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said the problems late Sunday (during the initial stages of the northeast snowstorm -- Ed.) underscored how the city could not rely on outside contractors to help with snow removal and other jobs in such storms, particularly during a holiday weekend. “You can never count on the privates, because they don’t have to show up,” he said. “What obligation do they...