Archive for July, 2007

“Amid the demise of manufacturing jobs, the birthright of a nice home, college for the kids is under siege.

 DAYTON, Ohio - No job lasts forever, especially a $30-an-hour assembly line job. Cheryl Seaton recognized that a long time ago, which is why she went back to college to pick up a degree that would insulate her from the economic wreckage she sensed was coming.

It didn’t help. When the end neared for her auto parts assembly plant last year, Seaton, 52, walked off the loading dock, armed with a bachelor’s degree. In January she began work as a mental health caseworker for a third less money.

Seaton is paid $9.45 an hour, less than what her 21-year-old daughter earns as a truck dispatcher. …”

Click on link to read entire article

The situation in Homeowners Associations across the country has much in common with the issues United Professionals is addressing. The manifestation is quite different, but the underlying cause is very much the same – the perversion of justice by the powerful and politically well-connected for their own benefit at the expense of ordinary people. 

Homeowners Associations – condos in most cases, but co-ops as well – are governed by a Board elected by Association members in annual elections. The Board generally sets policy and oversees the affairs of the association, and controls the assets and finances of the association.

It won’t come as a surprise that there are cases where members of a Board grow fond of their authority, fond of controlling association funds, and are unwilling to step aside when time rolls around for the next election.

Homeowners Associations are governed by State law; in California, for example, there is a section in the Civil Code called Davis-Stirling that governs the operations in HOAs.

Davis-Stirling has rules governing elections; rules providing for member access to Association records; rules governing a members right to use of his own unit as well as common areas of the property; etc., etc.

There is one item missing in these laws – there are no provisions for enforcement. If a member believes his or her rights are violated, the recourse is to file a complaint with the Courts, which can be a prohibitively expensive and chancy proposition. Add to that the fact that a suit will be defended by the Board not with their own funds, but the funds of the Association, and, accordingly, the Board does not have the incentive to act responsibly that one would normally find in a party to a lawsuit. The Board can hire the best and most expensive law firms, spare no expense, and fight ferociously to have their way – at no cost to individual members of the Board.

The most obvious recourse open to members in the case of abuse is the annual election, when members of an abusive Board could be removed. But state laws generally allow the Board to conduct the election – and they cheat!

You would think legislators would have an almost personal interest in seeing to it that HOA laws they themselves wrote would be effective, and so would be sure to supplement the laws with enforcement legislation. But that ignores another powerful consideration: the interests of the legal community. The attorneys are very happy to have all these complaints herded into the Courts; these lawsuits buy attorneys a good living.

They do not want any enforcement mechanisms. Consequently, the attorneys come out in force to lobby legislators in opposition to any reform legislation providing for effective HOA law, and so that is how things remain.

The end result is that HOA Boards have tyrannical powers, and the consequences are what might be expected. A Board can deny members access to Association records. Those opposed to the Board can face denial of services and intimidating lawsuits. Association members can - and do - lose their homes over minor technical violations of Association rules. (And the Board can embezzle!)

The current situation in HOAs is a national disgrace, particularly since those most affected – those living in these properties – are often senior citizens. Yet association members have no real representation to call on. Republican legislators favor authority - the Boards, while Democratic legislators are supported by the attorneys benefiting from the corruption, so they too will not respond.

The situation in HOAs mirrors in many ways the problems faced by professionals, with health care and the like. We must find a way to force politicians to respond to our needs.

For more information, visit the American Homeowners Resource Center at www.ahrc.com.

U.S.A., 2007. It was the best of nations. It was the worst of nations. In what was definitely not the best of its times – not for its healthcare system. What is difficult to impossible for individuals is merely tough but possible-through-persistence for a tidal wave of us. To get all the droplets of that tidal wave together, we have to start a lot of conversations.

This is a very personal tale of my discussions about the U.S. healthcare system with two very smart, very critically thinking professional women in their 50’s who happen to be good friends. Voter #1 is a politically conservative entrepreneur, who has managed her business both profitably and ethically for nearly 20 years, always providing her employees decent health insurance. Voter #2 is a liberal Midwestern “good girl” who has always worked for her living, for companies large and small; she has a health condition protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, and takes pride in her work productivity and professionalism despite her daily battle with discomfort (which she refuses to call “pain” unless it really knocks her out.)

I had expected to have two very different conversations with V1 and V2, given their intrinsic differences. I knew I had to approach each differently, and then be nimble to field any creative arguments they might come up with. But really, I expected my conservative friend to put forth the standard “socialized medicine” scare blather, against which I had my “well, let’s run a spreadsheet on the real numbers and just see” argument prepared. I hoped my liberal friend, who has appealed her share of insurance medical claims rejections and can do quite the impressive rant on the Evil Empire of Insurance of Big Pharma, to just ask where she can sign up for the coming grassroots movement.

Here’s what really happened.

With my conservative, entrepreneur friend, I opened with the health insurance burden on the ethical small business owner. How many entrepreneurs have we known in the past 20 years who closed their young businesses because they couldn’t afford the employees’ health insurance and they wouldn’t run a business without insuring their employees? Too many. Some small business had formed consortia and ganged up in professional organizations to insure their employees, but the costs were still too high for too many businesses. How many tiny business owners have we known who simply stunted their companies’ growth, always keeping just below the number of employees that would require them to provide insurance. Again, too many – and we didn’t like those folks who left their employees uninsured and filled resource gaps with contractors. So far, so good.

Then, when we were all in warm-fuzzy agreement, I launched into the universal healthcare model. Tax-funded, with corporate taxes as well as individual income taxes; burdens shared, peace of mind. Will of the people, surely – to ensure the basic healthcare needs of the most vulnerable of us: children, elderly, temporarily unemployed, workers whose employers couldn’t afford insurance under the current model. And. She. Agreed. Not a word about the evils of commie-pinko socialized medicine.

Success! Not exactly. As I was typing www.unitedprofessionals.org into her browser, she sighed and said, “But it’s so hard to fight City Hall!” She recounted a few personal horror stories of appealing medical insurance claims for her elderly parents and of zoning battles in her city. She had figured out how to (sort of) game the system that exists by contributing big to political campaigns, thus getting the politician’s attention to “intervene” in your behalf in various issues.
Start over. “How’s that working for you?” Well, not entirely. Not consistently. “Uh-huh. And how, as a genuinely compassionate and Christian conservative (which, I promise you, is truly the walk she walks), can you think the system is okay when people with money can game it even some of the time while citizens who have the same one vote but less “pull” can be easily bankrupted by a catastrophic illness?” Yes, she struggled with that problem. She gives. Her company gives. Her church gives. And fighting City Hall is so hard.

I observed that all the scattered giving isn’t effective; there needs to be a system. Net, with everybody’s taxes, including corporations’, we’d all end up giving the same or less, and we’d be sure that a tax-supported Federal system was doing the will of We the People to ensure the health of all of us. I reminded her that as citizens and patriots, it’s our civic duty to gather (if not also bear arms, at least not yet) to persuade City Hall of the error of its ways. Fighting City Hall individually is hard. Fighting it together isn’t much easier, but at least we can take over the Admin building, sing “We Shall Overcome” on the stairs leading to the portico, and attract lots of media attention … oh, wait, that was college in the ‘60’s. Same principle, though.
She’s thinking about it.

My liberal friend who’s way too familiar with the existing healthcare system’s shortcomings would surely be an easier hill to climb. I led with a little recap of her insurance appeals horror stories I’ve heard over the years. Yeah, terrible. Grumble, grumble.
Then, how about the time she was laid off and between jobs with zero health insurance? Oh! Awful. Terrifying!

Now, the universal healthcare concept. It’s yours regardless of who your employer is, even during the times when you don’t have an employer. “Ahhhh,” she sighed, “that would be ideal … but it’s so hard to fight City Hall.”

Same hill. Same climb. And she, too, is thinking about it.

They will both think about it because I am their friend, and my country’s citizen, and I will keep raising the issue. This is how a grassroots movement grows. You have to keep fertilizing it and adding more and more seeds.

Well … don’t just sit there. Go on. Fertilize what seeds you’ve got, and then go recruit some more. And come to United Professionals and write us your stories of action. Let’s all move forward into the best of times.

I have been bullied out of three jobs because the companies I worked for wanted to reduce staff without paying severance packages or unemployment compensation. At EDS in particular, managers are rewarded with bonuses for driving innocent people away empty-handed.

Psychological violence is corporate America’s preferred method of staff reduction these days. I’m hoping that UP will give this despicable practice more attention in the future. These evil institutions send people away with long-term psychiatric injuries, and the lack of media attention is scandalous in itself. See www.bullyinginstitute.org for a better description of workplace bullying.

Hi, I have a checkered past in Sales. Initially I do very well in organizations but have come to realize – after being canned with younger employees in a newspaper sales position and then getting involved in discrepancies in my commission at an exhibit sales company — that the average sales executive is lucky if he last even a few years, since anyone can be trained in sales and there are no unions!

I am very discouraged with corporations and their Management tactics. Several very informative books I recommend are “The 4 hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss and watching a movie called “The Corporation.”

I also believe strongly that the current political system is too polarized by our 2 party system and the Rich have kidnapped the Republican party. The middle class is getting screwed over and they need their own party (working and middle class). A third party that will at least “Check and Balance” those ultra-rich with middle-class concerns and will work like the 3 branches of government…..

I am a historian of 20th century American history. My mother was an activist in the teachers’ union in White Plains, NY. I think that professionals should organize just as much (if not more) than the traditional working class: maybe we need guilds instead of unions, but we need something.

In the humanities and academy, we are seeing a dramatic turn away from professional standards in employment — teaching assistants have struggled to unionize at certain schools, but professors byand large have not. Can we create an organization that honors the peer competition that drives creative, intellectual work while also establishing bonds of solidarity among academics and with other professionals outside the academy? That’s the challenge.

“Are we facing an IT shortage of crisis proportions, or systematically destroying a skilled and capable homegrown workforce?

Dave Lovelace laughs when you ask about the purported shortage of qualified IT workers. He has 35 years of senior-level IT experience under his belt, ranging from systems programming to systems engineering to business development. He’s published a number of well-regarded books on storage technology, forged strategic alliances between multinational vendors, and negotiated multimillion-dollars contracts.

And, apparently, nobody needs his services.

Over the past 24 months, Lovelace has applied for hundreds of jobs in Silicon Valley, where he’s based. It’s rare he gets even a courtesy e-mail or call in return.

“I’m not just sending out resumes to every job posting, but only the ones I’m qualified for,” said Lovelace, who just finished a book on storage migration for the SAP environment. “There’s clearly no shortage of technology workers. If that were the case, I’d been getting dozens of calls every week, and salaries would be going through the roof. And that’s just not happening.” …”

Click on link to read entire article

Health insurance in the United States is certainly neither “united” in our best interests, nor in a “state” that gives us peace of mind. Now, don’t get sick over the situation. Your insurance, if you have any, probably wouldn’t pay for your treatment. You’re not upset enough to be a danger to yourself or others, are you? No? Well, our healthcare system seems to be just such a danger.

The good news is that consensus on that point appears to be building on both sides of the aisle in both houses of Congress. But since we don’t yet have peace of mind, we can write to our representatives to give them a piece of our minds. And when we do write to them, we can throw in some facts to prove we’ve done our homework. In chronological order:

Point 1: In 2003, HealthAffairs.org titled a white paper “Employment-based Health Insurance Is Failing – Now What?” We still don’t know “what,” but analyst Alain C. Enthoven makes the point that corporate purchasing policies contribute to rising costs and inhibit economical approaches. It’s been four years. Let’s think up something better.

Point 2: The California HealthCare Foundation provides a 2002 (but not out-dated) study by the Georgetown University Health Privacy Project: “Purchasing Health Insurance Online.” From the overview page, the Tips for Consumers document will give you general guidelines, tips and resources for comparison shopping, and a list of health plan and broker sites to visit first. Hint: “Quality” is the top consideration. Too bad quality is so unevenly provided by the various plans in different geographical areas.

Point 3: A 2005 Georgia State University study found that differences in employers’ likelihood of offering coverage may be due to differences in plan supply or distribution, or differences in availability of coverage alternatives, such as safety net care. Maybe we can conclude that national universal health coverage would even the playing field.

Point 4: The Employment Policies Institute offers a May 2007 comparison of health insurance reform proposals. This study’s authors consider employer mandate (most expensive), expanded access to Medicaid, and a tax credit for low income individuals to offset some of the cost of private insurance (least effective). The Institute’s 2006 studies on The Dynamics of Health Insurance Coverage and Implications for Employer-Mandated Insurance and The Effect of Increases in Health Insurance Premiums on Labor Market Outcomes present stultifying arrays of metrics in support of conclusions that are no surprise. The “dynamics” study finds that people who work for small companies and lose their health insurance have the lowest likelihood of finding new insurance they can afford within a year, but enforcing employer mandates for insurance on small companies would likely have a negative effect on employment. The “premium increases” study tells you something else you already know – if you’re among the lucky two-thirds of the non-elderly population covered by employer-provided health insurance, the cost of your insurance has increased by over 59 percent since 2000, without an increase in the scale or scope of benefits. Not only that, but you’re increasingly likely to lose your job entirely (or be shifted to part-time work with no benefits) as your employer’s cost of health benefits rises. With every solution considered, we have the Devil here and the Deep Blue Sea there, and our only choices are to burn or drown. I hope we’re smarter than that as a nation. Thinking outside the box of these studies, the further conclusion is that universal health care is the only feasible solution.

Point 5: The Commonwealth Fund (whose mission is to create “a high-performance health system”) offers a 2007 study, “Congressional Health Care Bills, 2005-2007: Part I Insurance Coverage.” The study “considers whether the proposals would improve access to care, increase health system efficiency, make the system more equitable, and improve quality of care.” Among its observations on the question of quality, the report finds that “proposals that would organize coverage through a central mechanism, such as the Medicare program in Representative Stark’s proposal and Health Help Agencies under Senator Wyden’s bill, have the potential to improve quality in a number of ways.” And AARP’s July 9, 2007 Policy and Research Newsletter’s Divided We Fail section reports that the recent presidential debates addressed healthcare and financial security in only 6.4 percent of questions. Yet the candidates (and the media asking the questions) know that AARP’s demographic are highly motivated and highly likely to actually vote. What part of “keep your customer satisfied” don’t they understand?

Points, ad infinitum: If you want to bludgeon your national representatives with an ongoing barrage of healthcare suggestions, demands and peasant uprisings, The Commonwealth Fund’s website also offers “DC Policy Updates,” reports from the “Commission on a High Performance Health System,” and a “Newsletter Spotlight.” Current articles include “Why Well-Designed Universal Health Insurance Is Essential to a High Performing Health System,” “Health Care Disparities Linked to Where Patients Get Care,” and “Measuring Health System Performance: The State Scorecard.”

My education is in science and computer technology. I have a BA ( 1971) in Chemistry, and training in several computer languages. I have been a computer programmer analyst for about 25 years, mostly in the turbine engine business. I also speak, read, and write Spanish and French, and a little Greek.

The aircraft industry was in a slump in 2001. Software was also being outsourced to India and Pakistan. During those 25 years my hearing deteriorated also to about 3% of normal hearing. Then in December of 2001 my aorta burst resulting in surgery, and recuperation. I went back to work in February of 2002, and was laid off in about a month. We were told to think “globally.” I pointed out that I could conduct business in Spanish and French, and could easily learn Portuguese and Italian if I needed it. I was told that the speech referred to “off shore locations,” that means cheap labor countries that Americans were asked to donate to in the form of charities. We were also told that there was no point in applying for SAP training because Americans were not going to be assigned to the job anyway.

Then 9-11 hurt the aircraft industry, and made the business of software support for it worse. I must use a TTY relay service for the phone, and potential employers simply do not return the calls. The ads I see are an example of what Mr. Cohen is talking about, no one would ever meet all of that criteria. There is always some minor reason why I do not qualify for the position.

Here’s an item of interest to United Professionals. Click on the link to view the whole message.

http://www.madnamerica.com/

Join our Labor Day

iTunes Picnic

On September 3, 2007 please help us out by downloading your .99 cent copy of “Mad in America”, a song by ETx, from Apple iTunes. Send a musical message to Washington DC on Labor Day,that we are tired of corporations and government giving away American jobs to foreign countries through outsourcing and relocating factories. Our aim is to get on the iTunes Top 100 chart on Labor Day, and make our message known on one of the worlds largest download sites.