http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/11/24/john-l-smith-out-as-hog-coach Comments On: John L. Smith out as Hog coach by Max Brantley en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Wed, 22 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Wed, 22 May 2013 19:00:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:27:02 -0600 Arkansas Times
Did not see one comment regarding that.

Hmm.
Posted by shooter]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:08:27 -0600 Arkansas Times
I can attest to the fact that working life for employees of Dillard's is no better for those in the corporate office than those in the retail stores, disregarding the difference in business hours. It was a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE company; this cannot be stated emphatically enough.
Posted by munkle]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:27:27 -0600 Arkansas Times
I guess union rules stating that no Hostess delivery trucks could have both bread and snacks on board, despite the fact the goods were being delivered to the same store had nothing to do with it? Drivers were not allowed to load the snacks onto their trucks, certain workers could only load the snacks not bread, and vice versa.

You're right! The unions had nothing to do with it!
Posted by arhogfan501]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 10:25:39 -0600 Arkansas Times So let's go back to those two bankruptcies. Think some of the problems might have been caused by the "dead wood" in the company? Why, they dare not oust this VP or that manager for repeatedly making ignorant and/or self-serving decisions. They're family, including nephews, cousins, in-laws, outlaws, hangers-on -- you get the idea.
On a local level, for some time last spring, summer, and into the fall, our local Hostess outlet was inundated with product. Why? An out-of-state manager made the decision about how much product to make and ship to Arkansas, and he shipped a lot at times. Bread trucks, after their delivery runs, were coming back in with previously unheard of amounts of leftover product. Those of us who frequented the outlet could often buy fresher bread on those shelves than we could at our supermarkets, and at about half-price.
BTW, do you make more than, say $35,000 a year? That's a thousand-and-change more than the bakers got at $16 an hour. Oh, but they had insurance, you say? Yeah. The EMPLOYEES did. Wanna guess what family coverage would cost an employee? Dunno about Hostess specifics, but in our case, a few years back, it hit more than $800 a month. When you account for tax deductions, that's most of two weeks wages at $16 an hour.
Posted by Doigotta]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:45:29 -0600 Arkansas Times
Don't have much else to add but a couple of over-all observations:

1. When I was coming out of high school, skilled workers could look forward to a working lifetime (about 45 years) of stable employment in one career or industry, moving up through the ranks from entry-level to highest positions. But technology changed all that. Now workers have to look forward to changing careers or professions two or three times in a working lifetime. As a highly-educated "professional," I had four different distinct "careers" during my working lifetime.

1.-B. In my last two, I entered and progressed through on-the-job-training. No pre-employment training was available.

2. Until the latter part of the last century, American manufacturers and "commerce" depended upon the public school system to prepare potential employees for entry-level jobs. With the advances in technology--as noted in the NY Times article linked above--that no longer works. And employers find themselves in a catch-22: They have to train their own people for entry-level jobs in employer training programs. But the cost of those programs forces the employer to have to raise his prices, which puts him at a disadvantage in world-market competition.

2.-B. At the low wages offered even a trained person, and the dismal prospects for income advancement, many potential employees feel it takes less effort and hassle to settle for a similar-paying position that does not require all the time and effort of education and attainment of new skills--that in turn demand greater effort for satisfactory performance.

"There are no simple solutions to complex problems."

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:40:45 -0600 Arkansas Times Sorry to hear about your brother's son. Our oldest granddaughter has Cystic Fibrosis also. She is now 31, teaches Biology and Earth Science in Woodbridge, VA and travels. At eleven months she was given a life expectancy of 17 years, and we are very proud of her. The CF test is now routine for newborns. Not curable yet, but that is closer. We hope for the same for SCID.
Thank you and so many others for caring.
Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 08:26:55 -0600 Arkansas Times
munkle — Trust me. And if you don’t trust me, look it up: Many people at Dillard’s were making less than $10 an hour when my friend worked there a few years ago.

And as for sales, they were “pathetic” not only for my friend, but also across the board at Dillard’s back then. Thankfully, things are much better today. The company’s sales and stock prices have improved considerably.

Still, as a stockholder (a very minor one), I’m bothered that Dillard’s was listed as one of “America’s Worst Companies to Work For” earlier this year. The second worst, as a matter of fact.

http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archi…

Among the observations was that high turnover is the result of employees being paid on the number of sales made per hour instead of based on a commission.
Posted by Durango]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:59:07 -0600 Arkansas Times
And I don't subscribe to the idea that James' short life of suffering was meant to teach those who loved him some important lesson.

My oldest brother's son died of cystic fibrosis at age 29 and the preacher at their church tried to tell them that it was part of God's plan. Needless to say, they never went to that church again. We may learn from our own or other's suffering but some "all-knowing power" in the universe is not purposely inflicting it on us or those we love.
Posted by the outlier]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:54:24 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by arhogfan501]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:53:38 -0600 Arkansas Times
I would quibble with this, however. "I got mine; you can get yours, or to hell with you."

That may be true for some (probably more than I care to admit), but for most people it is simply a lack of imagination. Whether that lack is willful or not, I can't say.

They can't imagine being an 18 year old kid who has bounced from one foster home to another and suddenly finds him/herself tossed into the labor market with no skills to sell, maybe a poor el-hi experience, no life skills learned in a solid family, maybe some mental problems like anger management or depression.

They can't imagine being from an intact family but still carrying baggage related to depression or other issues. Or maybe the parents never emphasized education as a way to get ahead. I bless my parents for pounding that idea into the four of us. I am amazed at how many of our peers growing up did not further their education after high school---especially the girls.

We are told by our constitution that all men are created equal, but that simply isn't true. Otherwise, we should all be churning out piano concertos and theories of relativity. Aside from most of us not being geniuses, there is a wide spectrum in our coping abilities. I don't think it is a stretch to imagine that we have vastly different central nervous systems. Some of us can endure all kinds of hard knocks and pick ourselves up and get back in the game. Others, not so much.

I think depression is much more prevalent in our culture than we care to admit. I think this might explain a lot of our alcohol/drug problems. People are self-medicating just to make it through the night.

I was talking to Hayden a few days ago and the subject was the very low cost of food in this country relative to the rest of the world. She said we need to care for the people who work in low wage jobs that make our "good life" possible. I can't add much to that.

Here's a cartoon related to the topic.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/up…

And here's Krugman today.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/2…

And here's Krugman's link to Adam Davidson's "Skills Don't Pay the Bills".

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine…
Posted by the outlier]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:27:15 -0600 Arkansas Times As for low pay jobs--I came from the great plains back when meat packing was a "good" job. With union wages and hospitalization insurance, they bought homes, cars and lake cabins--nothing fancy, but good shelter, transportation and a place to fish. Then came Iowa Beef Packers--now Tyson-- to put the big packers and stock yards out of business. Todays meat packers barely make minimum wage (which is smaller in actual dollars than days of old) The cut and package factories have speeded up the lines, offer few benefits, and an injured worker is SOL. Government assistance has been greatly increased to take care of what were once self-sustaining workers, yet the price of meat has not decreased. Is this an American ideal?
Posted by Verla Sweere]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:15:23 -0600 Arkansas Times
Firstly, countries like China are so cheap because their currency is intentionally worthless. I am for free and honest trade with all nations. Yes, that includes Cuba and Iran. But these countries must live by the rules. Governor Romney and President Obama both promised to address this, and it can be done without a trade war. But neither would have and Pres. Obama will not.

In addition to that, the buying power of American consumers has been greatly diminished. When I made $5 per hour it was a living wage. Now $10 per hour is not a living wage. What happened? Our currency became worthless because we print it like Monopoly Money.
Posted by ProCarry]]> Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:01:08 -0600 Arkansas Times
We need to stop blaming American workers, who statistically are working more hours for less pay than at any time in the last 70 years, and are more skilled, thanks to mostly individual initiative, than at any time in that same period.
Posted by munkle]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:52:20 -0600 Arkansas Times
As for "illustrating a point," I think it rather condescending to "illustrate a point" amongst the posters on this blog, who have most likely very well "illustrated a point" such as yours in their own lives, and know that it's possible. However, systemic underemployment is not something that a nation of individuals can address individually; this is the gist of the conversation going on in this thread. I respect that you're tring to offer hope, but don't push that hope so hard that you deliberately dismiss the reality that 150 million Americans are struggling through right now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/magazine…
Posted by munkle]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:47:31 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Durango]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:32:57 -0600 Arkansas Times
The founders of Outward Bound noticed that when faced with life threatening crises, some folks curled up and died others fought and fought and sometimes survived. They were able to find one factor associated with perserverence was previous exposure to physically difficult experiences. Part of the goal of OB was to build up this base.

What are the factors which let one person accept minimum wage and energize another to change? Who knows, but clearly there are folks who will end up at each extreme.
Posted by mudturtle]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:23:30 -0600 Arkansas Times )
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 20:52:33 -0600 Arkansas Times
Thanks!
Posted by Perplexed]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 20:00:08 -0600 Arkansas Times
Yes, it's true that there are still similar routes for individuals here and there, those routes aren't available to, and wouldn't work for, hundreds of thousands of the currently unemployed and underemployed. They could work for a few hundred people across the country, perhaps even a few thousand, but probably not for more than a dozen or perhaps two dozen in a city even the size of Little Rock.

In other words, my experience does not offer a general solution to a huge problem in this country.

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 19:04:54 -0600 Arkansas Times
But I wanted to shine the light on the circumstance that there is no GENERAL path of escape from poverty and minimum-wage positions in this country.

And if all the minimum-wage workers found a path out and up, their former employers would imediately fill those positions with other people who would then be trapped in those same positions.

In short, one out of a thousand (for example, and hypotheticaly) finding a way out and up doesn't address the underlying problem of poverty and the plight of inadequately educated and skilled people in this country.

And there are still two overarching conditions in this country: (1) The nation doesn't have enough jobs available for people who already have good educations and experience and are looking for jobs. (2) If everyone in this country had a college degree, there are still jobs that need doing that don't pay enough for a family to have a decent standard of living--and I don't really need to cite examples, because everyone on this blog is aware of them.

In the last graduate school where I taught (and this was nearly 35 years ago), there were students who left with graduate degrees who had to take employment in fast-food places. Life just isn't always fair.

IMHO
Posted by SkyPilot]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:47:04 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Sound Policy]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:45:57 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Sound Policy]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:44:28 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by plainjim]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:38:53 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by SkyPilot]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:48:26 -0600 Arkansas Times