After American Home Mortgage laid of 1500 workers on August 3, 2007 many have been scrambling for new positions in the Long Island NY area. Many of them are still unemployed, their unemployment checks are about to end soon and though they are willing to take pay cuts and change industries, they’re having no success finding jobs.  That’s what’s happening right now and they’re in the pinch.

The journalist interviews two economists who are employed and based on historical data act as if there’s really not much of a problem. Historically, the Long Island area has a 3.6% unemployment rate which is well below average and signals a labor shortage.

It’s a bit like saying “if you put one foot in ice water and your other foot in boiling water, on average your feet should feel comfortable.”

I understand where the economists are coming from if, long term, the historical trend continues.  In the real world on the street it’s about Christmas, people are getting behind on their bills, and not a little bit desperate. Hopefully Long Island’s historic low unemployment levels and “labor shortages” will get these people back to work soon.

Here’s what he started looking for:

1. A Franchise

2. Brand name in the market

3. Good business owner support

4. No expensive retail location

5. Maximum @$60,000 (£30,000) investment

They ended up being involved with Chem Dry.

Read more at  Starting Out at the Telegraph 

Image courtesy Telegraph UK

Shilson rose rapidly, working 60-hour weeks and becoming general manager at the W. 7th Street store and, later, at the Richfield Taco Bell. She was robbed at gunpoint twice, including the time she was shot while opening the W. 7th restaurant one morning in 1998.

[Despite "Superior" ratings t]his summer, company supervisors put her on notice, criticizing her performance. She says company cost-cutting and the loss of experienced staff left her without resources to fix the problems.

From the Wadena Pioneer Journal

Today, she teaches classes ranging from using photo retouching programs in scrapbooking to getting familiar with a computer. She also designs Web pages, travels the country, and loves to see the proverbial little light bulb above her students’ heads light up when they “get it,” and learn a new skill, she said.

It wasn’t exactly the “shot heard ’round the world” but it signals publicly what everyone has long known in their “gut”… that the days when you could “start at the bottom and work to the top” are long dead.

But even worse is the cynical revelation that while that noble aspiration was ingrained in a generation or more of American workers, today’s employers simply manipulate it to their own ends – wagering that their workers still believe the myth themselves and will keep on slaving away, hoping for a “raise” that will never come.

It was one thing to keep slaving away for a raise that would never come.

Now the raises that did come are being taken away because there is no real reward for loyalty.

These employees who are “paid too much” got that way because their bosses at Circuit City approved their pay levels… but that was yesterday.

If the pay cuts were starting at the top and inflicted evenly that would be one thing. That would signal that Circult City had some class, but these are people being fired for the crime of “earning too much”, felonious “showing up for work” and nobody at the top is having to be accountable for their failures in creating the messed up system.

Here’s what the best companies do to remedy situations like this… 

Got Plan B?

Stockholders demanded better performance for the stock.

Hopefully they will have another stragegy in place – like working from home – in the event of this layoff materializing.

Sometimes I wonder how accurate they are.

One of the most devastating things about a lay off is the financial impact.

What lead me to make this post is that the “Thrify Scot” website was soliciting comments about money from bloggers. 

The site offers Debt Advice and it reminded me of some very real people whose lives were overwhelmed by the impact of debt and a lay off. Thrifty Scot is a UK site… but I assume folks in the UK have debt problems too and have to deal with the issues related to Credit Cards, Remortgages, etc.

As I said, the most destructive effect of a lay off are financial ones. We all tend to spend as much money as we make. So when we’re maxed out on debt, have been lazy about refinancing and saving money on interest, when we haven’t paid down our debt, etc… a layoff basically ruins us.

It’s really hard when a family all works at the same industry and all the jobs are lost the same time. When at least one person is able to continue working, at least there’s a chance to maintain a relatively normal life. But when everyone is laid off simultaneously… things can get grim fast.

The last lay off I’m familiar with found families being asked to pay $1800 per month for health insurance. They were only getting about $1,000 for “unemployment insurance”.

The most fortunate ones had paid down their mortgages, paid off car loans, restructured their debt when times were good. Some even had some extra cash flow streams created.

Before a layoff hits you, are you getting your finances in order? Even paying off a few dbets will free up cash flow that could make the difference if you lost your job.

Think ahead. Plan now! Get the Debt Advice you need while you have time to react. 

Note: Thanks for Thrify Scot for sponsoring this blog post.

I started coming down with something that I noticed Sunday PM.

I had an appointment with my physician for Monday anyway. I went there, got some prescriptions for this bug I have and am hopefully on the mend.

But while I was there, I asked if he thought I needed any blood work… the routine kind I kept hearing about.

He said they didn’t really do “preventative” blood work any more, at least that’s how I took it. Everything had to be accompanied by a “diagnosis”.

But depending on what is “diagnosed” if you ever need to buy private health insurance, these records can come back to haunt you. Some people at a local plant found that out during a layoff when they were told they’d need to pay $1800 per month for private health insurance. Their unemployment was slightly over $1000 per month!

Maybe that’s good. Another M.D. told me something similar. He said that all the statin drugs they prescribe are just liver poison and he suggested people take niacin instead. It doesn’t show up on your record if you need to buy health insurance and it worked as well without poisoning your liver.

Bottom line: If you want self employment, you not only have to look at the viability of the business, but how or if you’ll be able to get health insurance.

Given the price consciousness of the insurance companies, I really don’t see how nationalizing the system is going to help at all. Big Insurance and Big Government are two peas in the same pod.

So here’s some good news about how hundreds of workers avoided a layoff and didn’t lose the jobs to downsizing.

Please note though that this type of turn around can only happen when MANAGEMENT actually manages people instead of just crunching numbers.

You can read this for yourself at the Gallup Organization

An International Paper mill near Texarkana, Texas faced serious problems due to razor thin profit margins. While many companies choose to address margins by continually cutting the work force, International Paper chose to actually manage the workforce and bring them “onto the team” so that the workers would take “ownership” of the problems facing the plant not just feel themselves to be pawns to be sacrificed on the chess board of industry.

When margins become razor thin, as they have in many industries, often the profit variable that companies can best influence is employees’ enthusiasm and commitment. Engaged employees can save businesses a lot of money because they are more productive, more profitable, safer, and less likely to quit. Actively disengaged employees, however, cost a fortune to employ — Gallup estimates that actively disengaged employees cost the U.S. economy $300 billion a year in lost productivity alone.

When businesses get serious about employee engagement, often they’ll focus on trouble areas with laser-like intensity. If the Q¹² results show that too few people feel they have the “materials and equipment” they need to “do their work right” or that their “opinions seem to count,” the business will buckle down and fix those problems individually, energetically, and thoroughly. And it works. Employees know that the company takes engagement seriously, and they understand that they are each responsible for communicating their needs and improving their job experience. This is what the Texarkana mill did for a while — that is, until they got a better idea: integration.

In many organizations, the issues that prevent engagement are associated with systemic problems — for example, company-wide lack of communication or a serious disconnect between workers and managers regarding expectations. It’s rare, in fact, for problems that undermine engagement to exist openly and discretely — they’re often combined with other problems and embedded deep in the culture of a company, department, or workgroup. Bringing them into the open and tackling them at a workgroup level can make a huge difference in the engagement and performance of employees in the workgroup, but it takes time for solutions to trickle up and then out. What Texarkana found was that it could institute programs to solve big systemic issues — and simultaneously solve singular, isolated engagement problems.

The 12 Elements of Great Managing

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

_{Copyright © 1992-1999 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ. All rights reserved.}

Read it all…

Now, Ross Perot’s company, Perot Systems, is taking advantage of cost savings south of the border and opening a service center in Mexico to serve U.S. companies seeking to outsouce work according to Information Week.

Perot systems already has service centers in India in addition to U.S. and European centers.

Have a plan in place to make money.

Your boss has a plan to save money – even one who runs for President promising to stop outsoucing.