Tag: layoffs

Let's start with the "municipality" and work out way up, shall we?

We learn today that the Detroit Public Schools, long a paragon of Lefty administrative virtue, have 257 "ghosts" on the payroll.  According to the Ivory Tower these are folks who are pulling down major bank but aren't even supposed to be on the payroll.  The local public school bureaucracy is so wasteful of taxpayer dollars they don't even demand a lick of work to get them.  

There were 37 unclaimed paychecks and 220 unclaimed direct-deposit slips totaling about $208,000, said Odell Bailey, DPS' auditor general. He added that the recipients are not on approved leave.

Robert Bobb, DPS' state-appointed emergency financial manager, also said an audit has begun to determine if employees have unapproved health care  dependents that are running up costs.

Probably important, too, that we don't blame this entirely on the bureaucracy. That means there are 257 individuals who at one time or another were entrusted with the education of Detroit kids whose integrity was so poor they continued cashing the checks they knew they hadn't earned.  

DPS might want to audit their character assessment and their hiring practices next.  And they're not the only ones.  As frustrating as a chronically bungled payroll can be it isn't nearly as dangerous as the mistake the Granholm-Cherry administration made this week when they took a convicted murderer who'd wracked up 124 "major misconducts" since entering prison, took him out of jail and dropped him off at his grandfather's house without medication.  

Because that sounds like a safe thing to do.

Read on...

Though the job cuts are spread across the regional bank's operations, many of them are expected to occur in Michigan, which has about 7,000 of Comerica's slightly more than 10,000 workers. Comerica is the state's second-largest bank in terms of deposits...

Comerica, which moved its headquarters from Detroit to Dallas in 2007, expects the job reductions to result in a $35-million annual savings. They come on top of the elimination of 600 positions or 5% of its workforce last year.

Notice by way of reminder, if you will, that amidst Michigan's single state recession of 2007 the bank outsourced its major white collar jobs and operations, not to India or China or Mexico but to freaking Dallas.  And just in case you're not a geography major, Dallas is in Texas, that giant state with all of the cowboys down at the bottom of your map of the United States of America.  

Still tells a potent story about the way the Granholm-Cherry administration has handled Michigan's economy since taking the helm in January 2003.  Tells even more about the bank's perceived odds of a recovery after the Democrats took over the legislature in 2007, too.

But don't worry, the current Democratic governor, her hand picked successor and those very same legislators are still on the job, they still have a plan and they're working it and they're working it and jobs of tomorrow and cool cities and plan and working and plan.

Read on...

And while we little people have to sit at home in an icy, very much global-warming-free climate hoping for the change that Michigan needs in the worst way, the people we elected to deliver it for us here at the state level are out of the state getting ready to attend fancy balls this evening.

Sure, plenty of political hacks and activists and volunteers made their way to the inaugural, and good for them.  This is their day.  They want to self-identify with an incoming administration that has pledged to make its first official act all about making it easier to kill cute little innocent babies via the Freedom of Choice Act, hey, that's between them and their maker.  I know I wouldn't want to self-identify with that particular administration but I have what at least approaches a healthy fear of the almighty.  And karma.  

Particularly frustrating on a personal level that our supposedly pro-life Speaker of the House, Andy Dillon, is away from Michigan attending the festivities, jovially celebrating the arrival of a political climate that will be openly hostile to innocent life.  But he still finds a way to sleep at night and manages to justify each of his two faces and that's worthy of a round of applause.

(Pictured at right are Dillon with lefty political consultant and radio personality Kerry Ebersole.  Apparently this one popped up on Facebook with a headline indicating it was taken yesterday in DC.)

Of course, he's not the only prominent lefty who's taken the opportunity to abandon the ship here in Michigan to go party it up instead.  The Associated Press highlights the different approaches to potential state stimulus cash headed this direction via massive new deficit spending by congressional Democrats. The most obvious difference is that our local lefties want to use the cash to cover up their own budgeting mistakes by erasing red ink while Republican leaders in the House want instead to apply the cash, if it has to come, the way it seems to be intended, to sponsor work projects and give some of unemployed families a chance at a paycheck.  Oh, and the Republicans are actually here in-state working on fixing our problems.

Read on...

Think the man would like to take those words back?  I don't often, but I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.  Not sure how anyone at that level of state government "leadership" could pick up the newspaper these days and find anything to be proud of.  But what do I know?  Maybe he and I just have really different measures of success.

I mean, what is it exactly that John Cherry claims he's proud of and pleased to have tied around his neck as he begins his campaign to become Michigan's next governor?  

How about the headline news in the Ivory Tower this weekend that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan is going to be killing 1,000 Michigan jobs while simultaneously making it significantly more difficult for our state's senior citizens to afford health care.

Facing what it says could be losses of more than $1 billion through 2011, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan said Friday it will cut as many as 1,000 jobs and seek state approval to raise rates on its individual health insurance products.

The average rate hikes to be sought by Blue Cross are 55% for nongroup plans; 32% for Medicare Supplemental, or Medigap, products, and 42% for those with group conversion plans that carry over prior workplace coverage.

About 418,000 Michiganders -- half of them senior citizens -- are covered by those policies.

I'll admit up front that this is little more than my personal opinion... but I wouldn't be particularly proud of that kind of headline.  Wouldn't be happy at all that that was happening on my watch.  Witnessing a Michigan company (and not a manufacturing dinosaur) take a BILLION dollar loss, raise healthcare rates on senior citizens and kill 1,000 jobs is rough news.  Of course, according to John Cherry, well, that's a part of his "strong record."

And Michiganders across the state can only wish and hope and dream that his "strong record" ended there this weekend.  Alas.

The Livingston Press and Argus reports that a local third generation company is closing its doors too.  A small business started in the 1930s survived seven decades of Democrats and Republicans and wars and recessions and great societies but it won't survive the Granholm-Cherry administration.  

Read on...