Economy Could Dramatically Increase VA Poverty
Published: February 23, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A report by the Commonwealth Institute says Virginia’s poverty level could increase by as much as 218,000 people if national unemployment reaches 9 percent.
The Federal Reserve is predicting unemployment could hit that level this week.
If that happens, the Commonwealth Institute says the number of Virginians living in poverty is going up between 159,000 and 218,000. If unemployment hits 8 percent, the poverty figure will rise between 122,000 and 169,000.
The Commonwealth Institute says close to 700,000 Virginians live in poverty now.
Executive director Michael Cassidy says increases in unemployment are linked directly to rising poverty levels and the report gives Virginia a look at what lies ahead as the economy worsens.
The institute is a coalition of advocacy groups for the poor.
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Information from: Richmond Times-Dispatch,
http://www.timesdispatch.com
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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Reader Reactions
(chuck)
It is clear that you were brought up with a silver spoon in your mouth. Blaming unions for the demise of industry isn’t the way to go. AIG, citi, merl, ect.(all non-union) are prime examples of industrial failures.
Know this,, every company that is union deserves to have one. This is a indicator of former & current management that abuses workers, forcing them to work in unsafe sweat shops. I speak both as a former union member (CWA) and as a manager.
I began my fourty (40) year career with the telecom. industry. It was non union at the time. Miminum wage was $1.25 per hour and guess what my starting wage was? Additionally, I had to purchase (from the company) every tool,safety equiptment, test equiptment, ect. and had to pay to replace any stolen, lost, or broken tool. These I used while performing work for the company for $1.25 per hour.
The management hired & fired at will with no respect for craft. No raise was ever given until you were (lucky) to stay there for one year, then a foreman slipped by and whispered to me that I was getting a 5 cent raise on the hour. It was never too cold, never too hot, never too dangerous for you to quit work. There is many, many other areas of the job I could mention, but I hope you get some sense of what life is like working in some non-union envirement. Yes, unions bargin for wage adjustments, benefits for it’s members,ect. DON"T BLAME union members for suppossidly high wages. I ask you,, How much money have you turned down when salary adjustments are in order???
I retired as a manager. Having a union keeps management in line. They (we) could not pick on a worker just because we didn’t like him/her or because they didn’t like us. I’ve seen unions make consessions when the company needed them. Also a union shop is much easier to manage than non-union.
So kinda be slow about blowing unions out the door, If you have never been there, you can only guess, but if you had been there, then you know and it just burns the h—l out of you when a person blames unions for the demise. Did you never hear of NAFTA?
The (UAW)only ask for their share of life. The cars were only as good as the parts management gave them to assemble a car. Thousands of service industries supply parts VIA the lowest bidder and some suppliers back when did not know much about quality. Most of these suppliers are by-the-way are non union workers with little or no skills. The only other reason I can think that you are so adament against unions, perhaps you are a Republican and probably drive a foreign made vehicle.
Funny that Hero Pliot even said Airlines use bankruptize to contol wages while executives of the company, who can’t fly a plane, take million dollar salarys and multi million dollar bonuses the working people who actually run the airline gewt fixed pay and fixed bonuses.
Of course the fixed bonuses are based on performance unlike the executive bonus that has no base at all and it just a way to burn up the cash so Investors will gewt very little in dividens !!!!!!1
Heck Yeah !!!! Join the union and drive your company out of business by making it so inefficient that it can’t compete against similar business. ……..GM and the Airlines are two great examples of what a union will do for a company. I would love to hear about one company in the last 30 yrs that a union has turned around from a failing company into a successful one. If it wasn’t for government jobs the union would be a thing of the past in our country….and we all know how great and efficient government jobs perform. Unions are good for one thing ….protecting people who are to sorry to work and making it harder on people who really care about protecting their job.
Stay poor don’t join a union. While businesses form organizations to work in COLLUSION against the working man.
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