Monday Feb 15 2010
We have added new links for students to give a better perspective on what is happening in America. Mish discusses how unions are self destructing, consider this excerpt.
More than 3,000 employees of nickel miner Vale Inco have been on strike since mid-July, and after seven months living off of $800 a month in strike pay, the repo man has come knocking.
"We've got people losing homes. We've got families breaking apart. We can't make our payments," said worker Pat Digby, braving a wind chill of -25C to picket at the front gate of Vale Inco's smelter in the Sudbury neighbourhood of Copper Cliff.
Price said he and some of his colleagues have looked for work elsewhere to sustain them during the strike, but no one wants to hire them because they fear they'll quit as soon as the labour dispute is resolved.
At issue are proposals by Vale Inco to reduce a bonus tied to the price of nickel and to exempt new employees from its defined-benefit pension plan, moving them instead to a defined-contribution plan.
We will study pensions in Chapter 17 in the Intermed II class. I have not covered this topic much in past classes as I contended there would not be another defined benefit plan created again, ever. Here is proof of what I am saying. The link above also mentions a proposal in Utah to eliminate the 12th grade, altogether. Other cities and school districts are foolishly laying off employees altogether. As I have mentioned in class, across the board salary cuts would keep everyone working and immediately downsize to what is needed without putting people on unemployment, oh well.
Professor Elam 
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