Google Inc. has temporarily shut down a search engine feature that allows users to find real-time updates from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other social networking sites.
A message posted early Monday on Twitter by the team behind Google Realtime says the search feature has been temporarily disabled while Google explores how to incorporate it into its recently launched Google+ project. The tweet tells readers to “stay tuned.”
Google+ is the search giant’s latest stab at entering the social networking segment of the Internet free business cards. The project was unveiled last week and lets users share things with small groups of people.
Google did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment on Realtime.
Eurozone finance ministers say Greece could get a key next installment on its bailout loans by mid-July only if it passes key laws on spending and privatization.
The ministers met Sunday over Greece’s debt crisis but did not announce a final deal on the euro12 billion loan installment, needed to avoid an imminent default.
They also said they would welcome “informal, voluntary” renewals of bond holdings as a contribution by private investors. But any measure must not lead to Greece being ruled in default.
Greece got a euro110 billion in bailout loans last year, but is still struggling. The government admits it will need another bailout of about the same size. No deal on that was announced.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
LUXEMBOURG (AP) _ A European official says that finance ministers from the Group of Seven rich countries were discussing Greece’s debt crisis on a conference call early Monday loans for people with bad credit.
The official said that the call was designed to update the finance ministers of United States, Canada, Japan and the U.K. on discussions taking place in parallel among the eurozone’s top financial officials.
The official said the ministers _ who were joined in Luxembourg by the heads of the IMF and the European Central Bank _ were also working on a statement on Greece. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions were still ongoing.
The two-day meeting is key to signing off on a vital loan installment for debt-stricken Greece and discussing the terms of a second bailout for the country.
As companies like Sony and Citibank identify the causes of recent security breaches and try to remedy network weaknesses, area businesses are well aware of potential threats.
Yet, improving security is more than beefing up firewalls or installing better encryption technology. The weakest link remains the individual employee, who may be using less secure email services or carelessly leaves sensitive data unsecured, analysts say.
Boeing experienced this first-hand when, in 2006, an employee’s unattended laptop was stolen. Though password-protected, the laptop contained Social Security numbers, home addresses and other personal information on 382,000 workers and retirees.
The theft spurred the Chicago-based aircraft maker to implement better plans to safeguard such data.
Diane McClain, operations manager of the cyber security division at the Newberry Group, stressed the importance of employee training to ensure that information can be seen by only those who need to see it, protecting it from “the bad guys.”
Newberry Group, which began with contracts to the federal government to staff data centers, expanded from information technology to cyber security in 2005. This element of its business has been growing ever since. The company, based in St. Charles, now investigates breaches, examining hacks with digital forensics and turning evidence over to law enforcement.
McClain’s focus has remained consulting with companies to find and repair holes in their networks. She said it was balancing security measures with availability
The Greek government endorsed an accelerated asset-sale plan and 6 billion euros ($8.4 billion) of budget cuts to win extra aid and stem a market slide that threatens to swamp debt-laden euro-area nations.
Belgium had the outlook on its AA+ investment-grade credit rating lowered to negative by Fitch Ratings yesterday as the cost to insure Greek debt against default rose to a record and the yield on its 10-year bonds increased to a euro-era high.
Europe’s debt crisis has deepened as euro political leaders clashed with central bankers after floating the prospect of extending maturities on Greek bonds. That “soft” restructuring may also be accompanied by more loans to Greece, which received a 110 billion-euro bailout last year, now that the government has delivered the additional budget cuts and pledged to speed asset sales.
“There may be slipping, sliding into some sort of re- profiling of Greek debt,” Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Bloomberg Television’s In the Loop yesterday. “They may be about to face their own special European Lehman moment.”
To avert that possibility, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s Cabinet agreed yesterday to sell stakes in Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (HTO) by the end of next month, as well as Public Power Corp SA (PPC), Hellenic Postbank SA, and the country’s ports.
Stakes’ Value
The state’s stakes in those three companies currently have a market value of 2.1 billion euros. The government also said it would create a fund comprising assets to accelerate the sales, intended to raise 50 billion euros by 2015. The bulk of that will come from selling 35 billion euros of real estate.
Greek 10-year yields were little changed at a record 17 percent, while yields on two-year notes slipped 18 basis points to 26.07 percent. Contracts on Greek default insurance jumped 27 basis points to a record 1,400.
The government plans to complete the sale of Postbank by the end of the year, and to sell 75 percent stakes in Piraeus Port Authority and Thessaloniki Port Authority SA. It also intends to extend the concession for Athens International Airport this year.
Greece owns 20 percent of Hellenic Telecommunications, or OTE, which has a market value of 3.2 billion euros. It has the right to sell a 10 percent stake to Deutsche Telekom AG, which already holds 30 percent. The government is seeking financial advisers to exercise the put option, and for the sale of a further 6 percent of the company, the finance ministry said.
Budget Cuts
The Cabinet also announced the additional budget cuts worth about 2.8 percent of gross domestic product needed to reach a 7.5 percent deficit target for 2011 even as its economy contracts for a third year, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said.
“With an economy still in recession, it’s very difficult to keep piling on larger amounts of fiscal tightening,” said David Mackie, London-based chief European economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a conference call yesterday. “I think instead we are moving to an environment where asset sales are going to be used as the key means of signaling Greece’s commitment here.”
Greece has a “refinancing hole” of 30 billion euros for both 2012 and 2013 each, according to economist Nouriel Roubini. The nation could restructure by issuing debt with lower interest payments and extend maturities as it’s unlikely the nation will “regain market access for the next five to 10 years,” he said in an interview last week.
Deficit Forecasts
The European Commission on May 13 said that the deficit would be 9.5 percent of GDP this year, more than three times the EU limit, without the additional budget cuts approved yesterday. Debt, already the euro area’s biggest relative to economic output, may reach 158 percent of GDP this year and peak at 166 percent next year.
Investment-grade Belgium also took a hit as Fitch followed Standard & Poor’s in saying that political deadlock complicates efforts to cut the euro area’s third-highest debt load.
Fitch may cut Belgium’s grade, the second-highest rating, should the country fail to adhere to its deficit targets, according to a statement. Belgium needs to reduce its shortfall to less than 3 percent of GDP next year and balance its books by 2015, as agreed with the European Commission.
A caretaker administration has ruled Belgium since elections last June as tensions in the linguistically divided nation led to the longest postwar political stalemate in Western Europe. A strengthening economic recovery has helped shrink the deficit to an estimated 3.6 percent of GDP this year from 5.9 percent in 2009, though reducing the debt will require political resolve, Fitch said.
Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said investors should shed their pessimism and stop hoarding cash amid prospects for a global stock rally that could start in China.
The view that “the West is in trouble” is wrong when nations including Germany, Sweden, Australia and Canada are performing strongly, O’Neill said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong, recorded yesterday and broadcast today. Investors should “stop worrying so much,” said O’Neill, known for coining the BRIC acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Global investors have tempered their optimism about the U.S. and world economies and plan to put more of their money in cash and less in commodities over the next six months, a quarterly survey of Bloomberg subscribers showed yesterday. The poll, conducted May 9-10, also found that investors’ enthusiasm for stocks is cooling.
O’Neill, 54, said his strongest hunch is that China’s inflation may be close to easing, meaning the Chinese stock market may “go crazy” in the second half of the year. The central bank yesterday raised banks’ reserve requirements by half a percentage point to lock up cash that threatens to fuel gains in consumer prices.
‘Every Little Problem’
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, investors are overly concerned at the possibility of so-called black swan events, said O’Neill, using a term sometimes used to describe unlikely occurrences with severe consequences.
“Every little problem that crops up somewhere in the world is not going to create another black swan,” he said, adding that “there’s far too much conservatism,” in terms of investors holding cash.
O’Neill reaffirmed his view that Russian stocks are cheap, on the same day the nation’s Micex Index (INDEXCF) slid to a five-month low on falling commodity prices. He also said that a global stock rally “could start in China.”
His positive comments on the outlook for China came as two people with knowledge of the matter said Goldman Sachs plans to set up a yuan-denominated private equity fund in the nation. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein attended a ceremony for Goldman Sachs in Beijing yesterday, the people said, declining to be identified before an announcement.
After a 40 percent drop in sales from October 2008 to February 2009, Materials Processing Inc. laid off workers, changed the way it sets prices and took fewer risks in the volatile commodities markets.
The efforts returned the Logansport, Indiana-based metals- processing company to profitability starting in March 2009, and sales are back to pre-crisis levels, said Chief Executive Officer Clay Barnes.
“We aggressively restructured and are going to be around for our customers for a very long time,” he said.
Once-ailing manufacturers are enjoying a robust rebound as cost-saving moves from job cuts to a greater reliance on technology help drive stronger-than-forecast growth. The shift has helped set the stage for a potential “manufacturing renaissance,” says James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Minneapolis-based Wells Capital Management. He predicts the industry will set the pace for U.S. expansion and the American stock market during this decade, as technology did in the 1990s.
“Manufacturing is leading the whole economy,” said Paulsen, whose firm oversees about $340 billion. U.S. manufacturers “had to find religion. They’ve really cleaned up their balance sheets. What is left is the cream of the crop.”
Investors’ confidence in the industry is evident in the Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLI), an exchange-traded fund made up mostly of manufacturers including Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and Boeing Co. (BA) in Chicago. The fund has climbed 37 percent since Dec. 31, 2009, compared with a 20 percent rise in the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index.
‘Global Strength’
Cooper Industries Plc (CBE), Deere & Co. (DE), Kennametal Inc. (KMT) and Timken Co. (TKR) are among businesses that “have emerged quite strongly and are able to benefit not only from the domestic recovery, but the global strength of markets,” said Eli Lustgarten, a senior research analyst at independent investment- research firm Longbow Securities in Independence, Ohio. While he recommends all four companies, Lustgarten said neither he nor Longbow owns their shares.
Timken, the Canton, Ohio-based maker of roller bearings and steels used in tools, cars and farm equipment, hired back all 3,500 manufacturing workers it had laid off in the recession and is creating 200 new jobs at three plants in its hometown, said spokeswoman Lorrie Paul Crum. It’s also added new product lines in areas such as wind energy, she said.
“The company is now on pace to achieve record earnings this year, and sales are growing substantially around the world,” Crum said.
Falling Dollar
The rebound in manufacturing — buoyed by a falling dollar — “has been much faster and stronger than companies anticipated, and they’ve been able to ramp up production without having to dramatically increase hiring,” Lustgarten said.
IntercontinentalExchange Inc.’s Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against currencies of six major trade partners including the euro and yen, has dropped 12 percent in the past year as emerging-market wages rise. China’s private-sector pay in urban areas increased 14.1 percent on average to 20,759 yuan ($3,197) in 2010, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.
“We’re seeing quite an uptick in our exports from the U.S. because of the low dollar,” said Eric Spiegel, president and chief executive officer of Siemens Corp., a subsidiary in Washington of Munich-based Siemens AG. (SIE) Siemens exports $2 billion to $3 billion a year from the U.S.
Shrinking Trade Gap
The Obama administration is counting on manufacturers to help double shipments to foreign markets by 2015 and reduce the trade deficit. Rising exports have helped shrink the trade gap 24 percent to $45.8 billion as of February, the most recent month available, from $59.9 billion in January 2008, a month after the recession began.
U.S. companies “recognize there are tremendous opportunities overseas” and have made “some pretty impressive productivity gains,” said Chad Moutray, chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, an industry trade group in Washington. “You’ve started seeing a lot of pent-up demand.”
Signs of a robust rebound are reflected in the Institute for Supply Management’s factory index, which shows the industry expanding for 21 consecutive months through April. Manufacturing led “moderate” growth across much of the U.S. in February and March, according to the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book regional survey released April 13, with nine of the 12 Fed banks citing improvements in production, orders or revenue.
Rising Profits
Manufacturing productivity rose 5.9 percent last year, the third fastest increase since Labor Department records began in 1987, behind gains of 7.3 percent in 2002 and 6.3 percent in 2003. Profits from current production jumped 72 percent in 2010, the biggest annual increase since 2004, according to Commerce Department data.
At the same time, companies have added just 250,000 jobs since December 2009, when employment dropped to a post-World War II low of 11.5 million; the peak was 18 million in the late 1980s, according to Moutray.
“We are still a ways away from getting back to where we were,” said William Strauss, a senior economist and adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, which represents most of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. While production eventually should return to pre-recession levels, “I would question to a degree whether employment levels go back to where they were in late 2007,” he said. Still, “if you believe the industries hit hardest come back the strongest, that’s definitely true for manufacturing.”
Plummeting Sales
Sales at privately held Materials Processing’s three units plummeted during the recession because of falling orders and a decline in commodity prices that saw copper go from $4 a pound to $1.50 a pound within months, said Barnes, 45.
The company laid off half of its 600 employees and began setting prices when a customer placed an order, in anticipation of further declines in metal values, instead of when a product shipped, Barnes said. It initiated a third step: using futures contracts as a hedge against falling prices for copper and brass, which it was buying on the open market.
“We took the approach that things would not get better at the trough of the downturn and we needed to re-size our organization to what we considered to be a new reality,” Barnes said. “The recession forced everyone to get leaner.” The company has since rehired 150 of the 300 people laid off, he said.
Cheaper than China
Foreign companies increasingly see the attraction of having operations in America. Siemens is spending $170 million to expand a gas-turbine factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, that will manufacture the turbines “at the end of the year cheaper than we can make them in Shanghai,” Spiegel said. “It’s a good time to be adding new production capability in the U.S.”
Subsidiaries of overseas businesses consider America’s skilled workforce an important reason to invest in the country, according to a survey last year by the Organization for International Investment.
“For some of the European companies, the U.S. has become a cheaper source of labor,” said Nancy McLernon, president and chief executive officer of the Washington-based organization.
The downsizing of manufacturing during the last decade also has left what Spiegel called a “void in a lot of areas,” including wind energy. Siemens opened a new 300,000-square-foot wind-turbine facility in Hutchinson, Kansas, in December. Rising transportation costs, on the back of surging oil prices, have enhanced the attractiveness of setting up shop in the U.S. rather than importing such heavy items as blades for wind plants, according to Spiegel.
“You’re going to see more people like us starting to put manufacturing back in the U.S.,” he said.
With tears welling in her eyes, the 16-year-old recounted how both her brothers were killed by troops fighting for strongman Laurent Gbagbo. Then rage contorted her face as she ranted against the arrested former president: “They must kill him. He’s a savage.”
Gbagbo was finally arrested and forced from power on April 11, more than four months after he lost elections. Calls for reconciliation and healing have come from all sides since then.
“We beg forgiveness for the bad things that have happened. But nothing can be gained by seeking vengeance,” said warlord Ibrahim “IB” Coulibaly, who had thrown his forces against Gbagbo. “Hatred and vengeance are our weaknesses.”
President Alassane Ouattara himself has called for reconciliation. He also has said he wants Gbagbo tried by national and international courts.
But despite calls for healing in Ivory Coast, some say they cannot forgive.
Justice Minister Jeannot Ahoussou said he is drawing up a list of ministers, generals and journalists to be charged with blood crimes, corruption and hate speech.
At an Abidjan church where Gbagbo partisans have sought refuge, people still were talking of the need for the West African nation to be run by “real Ivorians” _ a reference to Gbagbo’s divisionist tactic of questioning the nationality even of Ouattara, who was born in Ivory Coast but whose father is from neighboring Burkina Faso. Gbagbo also attempted to raise Western opposition to Ouattara by harping on his Muslim religion and suggesting he would turn Ivory Coast into a refuge for Islamist radicals.
Gbagbo, who came to power in 2000 promising to unite the country, had resorted to inciting old tribal and religious rivalries to create dissension and prolong his stay in power.
Coulibaly, whose “Invisible Commando” began the fight in the commercial city of Abidjan to wrest power from Gbagbo troops who fired mortars and rockets at civilians, said Ivory Coast needs reconciliation and pointed to South Africa as an example. But Coulibaly himself has been a divisive force among those fighting for Ouattara, raising fears that old rivalries put aside while different armed groups joined forces to topple Gbagbo could now re-emerge.
Coulibaly has denied there was infighting between his fighters and other pro-Ouattara forces. But witnesses said there was, costing lives and delaying Gbagbo’s capture for 10 days. The witnesses said Coulibaly wanted to announce on TV that he was heading a new transitional military government. Coulibaly denies it.
Another possible obstacle is Gbagbo’s rabble-rousing youth minister Charles Ble Goude, who is in hiding. He is wanted by the Ivory Coast government for crimes including inciting his Young Patriot thugs to attack foreigners and people from tribes loyal to Ouattara. He also allegedly used them as a human shield around the presidential residence where Gbagbo had sheltered in a fortified underground bunker.
Before Gbagbo was finally ousted, there were barbarities on both sides.
Gbagbo fighters slaughtered at least four Muslim imams during the fighting in Abidjan and set ablaze at least 10 mosques.
Pro-Ouattara fighters attacked the Catholic cathedral in the southwestern cocoa port of San Pedro, firing into 5,000 residents from tribes opposed to Gbagbo who had sought refuge there. One man was killed and many wounded.
On Saturday, Gbagbo party leader Pascal Affi N’Guessan urged die-hard militants to lay down their arms and called for national reconciliation. “The war has ended,” he said, urging Ivorians to “give a chance to the restoration of peace” and halt the “revenge killings, the looting.”
He expressed the party’s sympathies to the families of all those who died.
But that is not enough for Fatoumata Zhama Diaby, the 16-year-old. She was at a weekend march, dancing and singing along with other women and shouting their support for Ouattara. After she lashed out at Gbagbo, a reporter asked if she heard Ouattara’s call for reconciliation.
“They killed both of my brothers. We are six left now, only girls. My brothers were very dear to me,” she said, putting a hand over her heart.
She said Fohmad Diaby, 24, and Comaba Blo Diaby, 17, died the day of the election, Nov. 28, when soldiers attacked people protesting Gbagbo’s refusal to step down. The elder brother was hit by a grenade she said, showing shrapnel wounds on her arms from the same blast. The younger brother was disabled and could not run with others. He was shot.
“I can never, never forgive them,” Diaby said. “Gbagbo is inhuman. If I saw him today, I wouldn’t just kill him, I would cut him into pieces.”
Crows cawed overhead as tsunami survivors in devastated towns along Japan’s northeast coast buried their dead in makeshift graves en masse Wednesday as workers at Fukushima’s overheated nuclear plant struggled to cool down the crippled facility.
With supplies of fuel and ice dwindling, officials have abandoned cremation in favor of quick, simple burials in a show of pragmatism over tradition. Some are buried in bare plywood caskets and others in blue plastic tarps, with no time to build proper coffins. The bodies will be dug up and cremated once crematoriums catch up with the glut, officials assured the families.
In Higashimatsushima in Miyagi prefecture, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, soldiers lowered bare plywood coffins into the ground, saluting each casket, as families watched from a distance and helicopters occasionally clattered overhead.
Some relatives placed flowers on the graves. Most remained stoic, folding hands in prayer. Two young girls wept inconsolably, hugged tightly by their father.
“I hope their spirits will rest in peace here at this temporary place,” said Katsuko Oguni, 42, a relative of the dead.
In Fukushima, the struggle to stabilize the plant suffered another setback Wednesday after a spike in radiation levels forced officials to pull workers and suspend restoring power to the Unit 2 reactor, a Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency official said in Tokyo.
The setback showed how tenuous the situation remains nearly two weeks after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out power to the Fukushima complex, allowing radiation leaks that have seeped into vegetables, raw milk, the water supply and even seawater.
Broccoli was added early Wednesday to a list of tainted vegetables that already includes spinach, canola and chrysanthemum greens.
The nuclear crisis has complicated the government’s response to the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami that swallowed up villages along the coast. The number of bodies collected stood at more than 9,400, with more than 14,700 people listed as missing. Those tallies may overlap.
Hundreds of thousands remain homeless. Schools, gymnasiums and other community buildings in the northeast are still packed with survivors, many of them elderly suffering after days without heat, medicine and hot meals.
In Fukushima, relief after the lights went on late Tuesday in the control room of Unit 3 made way hours later for concern over radiation levels in Unit 2, putting on hold plans to try restarting the plant’s crucial cooling system. The sprawling nuclear complex has six units.
In the first five days after the disasters struck, the Fukushima complex saw explosions and fires in four of the plant’s six reactors, and the leaking of radioactive steam into the air. Since then, progress continued intermittently as efforts to splash seawater on the reactors and rewire the complex were disrupted by rises in radiation, elevated pressure in reactors and overheated storage pools.
Missions to dump seawater into one storage pool holding spent nuclear fuel went well, and firefighters continue to spray water on spent fuel pools in two other units, NISA said. Temperature at a seventh, joint spent fuel pool have stabilized, they said Wednesday.
Two workers were slightly injured trying to restore electric cables, neither from radiation, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Kaoru Yoshida said Wednesday.
Tokyo Electric warned that time is needed to replace damaged equipment and vent any volatile gas to make sure the restored electricity does not spark an explosion.
“You’re going to get fires now as they energize equipment,” said Arnold Gundersen, the chief engineer at the U.S.-based environmental consulting company Fairewinds Associates. “It’s going to be a long slog.”
Radiation continues to leak from the site, though the main barriers appear intact, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
The operator suspects some damage to an inner containment structure at Unit 2 as a result of an earlier explosion there. Also, spent fuel pools in damaged buildings could be releasing some radioactivity into the air.
“I think we have enough information to determine that there’s not large holes or excessive releases from those containments, but we continue to see radiation coming from the site … and the question is where exactly is that coming from,” nuclear safety expert James Lyons said at a briefing Tuesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Health Ministry ordered officials in the area of the stricken plant to increase monitoring of seawater and seafood after elevated levels of radioactive iodine and cesium were found in ocean water near the complex. Education Ministry official Shigeharu Kato said a research vessel had been dispatched to collect and analyze samples.
Doses detected so far are low and not a threat to human health unless the tainted products are consumed in abnormally excessive quantities, government officials and health experts said.
Radiation levels in the air in Tokyo have been well below the global average for naturally occurring background radiation.
With barely a whimper of the protests that have convulsed Wisconsin, legislation to curb public employee unions is speeding toward passage in Ohio, an even bigger labor stronghold.
Labor experts said the greater tumult in Wisconsin reflects the state’s long history of progressive political activism; the Statehouse’s location in Madison, the famously liberal home of the University of Wisconsin; and perhaps a feeling of hopelessness among Ohio’s working class, which has been hit particularly hard by the recession.
Days of protests in Columbus haven’t added up to the numbers seen in a single day in Madison. The rallies there have topped more than 70,000 people, compared with roughly 8,500 on the largest day of demonstrations at the Ohio Statehouse. When the Ohio bill passed the Senate 17-16 on Wednesday, the crowd was estimated at 450.
“Madison is kind of a perfect storm of factors for this,” said Don Taylor, assistant professor of labor education at the University of Wisconsin School for Workers in Madison. “It’s an extremely progressive city in terms of politics. It’s one of those places in the country where people will refer to it as a ‘People’s Republic.’”
Wisconsin’s measure remains in limbo in the GOP-controlled Legislature after the 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois two weeks ago to deprive the chamber of a quorum. In Ohio, though, the Republicans hold big enough majorities in both chambers to vote on the bill and pass it even if the Democrats walk out.
Ohio’s bill could go to House committee hearings as early as next week. The measure is likely to receive strong support from the full chamber and Republican Gov. John Kasich.
Ohio’s bill would restrict the bargaining rights of roughly 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees. They would no longer be able to negotiate health care benefits or certain working conditions, and they would be barred from striking.
Wisconsin’s measure would affect about 175,000 workers but would exempt police and firefighters. Under the bill, public employees would be allowed to negotiate wages only. And even then, they could not get raises higher than the inflation rate without a public referendum. Wisconsin already outlaws strikes by public employees.
The speed with which the Ohio bill cleared the Senate is energizing Republicans as they push to break what they see as labor’s stranglehold on state and local governments, schools and public safety departments.
Political observers at the Ohio Statehouse were flabbergasted by how fast the legislation was moving in a longtime labor stronghold like Ohio. The state has 655,000 union members, who constitute 13.7 percent of the workforce, compared with 335,000 members, or 14.2 percent of the workforce, in Wisconsin, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“For as far-reaching this thing is and how many lives it will affect, I can’t believe how fast it moved,” said Columbus Police Sgt Low fee payday loans. Shaun Laird.
Many union backers were also clearly disappointed by the turnout in Columbus given the high political stakes in Ohio, a political battleground state that decided the 2004 presidential election.
A law undercutting Ohio’s unions could kneecap the state’s Democratic Party ahead of the 2012 race for the White House by depriving it of a major source of contributions and organizational muscle. Or, as some union members argue, the battle could backfire on the GOP by galvanizing the Democratic Party and its working-class base.
Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said the walkout by the Democrats in Wisconsin slowed down the process there and allowed the opposition to organize. He called what was happening in Ohio “a blitzkrieg.”
Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for public employees, in 1959, and is the birthplace of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation’s largest public employee union.
In Ohio, despite a long union tradition among steel and auto workers, the right to collective bargaining was not extended to state employees until 1983. A Gallup survey released in August showed Ohio with the lowest proportion of government employees in the U.S. _ 12 percent of the state’s workforce.
Wisconsin’s capital, Madison, is more liberal than Columbus. Were Ohio’s bill debated in one of its blue-collar bastions _ say, Cleveland, Akron or Toledo _ the demonstrations might have been far larger, said Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder.
Ohio State University is only a couple of miles from the Ohio Statehouse, but the tens of thousands of students there have played little part in the pro-labor rallies.
By contrast, passionate student demonstrators from the University of Wisconsin’s flagship campus in Madison _”up there with Berkeley” in its liberalism, according to Vedder _ have been bolstering the Wisconsin fight. The campus is right next to the Capitol.
“There has always been a sympathy for collective approaches to labor problems in Wisconsin, and you don’t have that as much in Ohio,” Vedder said. “It doesn’t have that same progressive reputation or history.”
John Russo, labor studies professor at Youngstown State University, said the low numbers of people protesting in Ohio reflect the hurt that has been inflicted by the recession in the state, where unemployment is 9.5 percent versus 7.5 percent in Wisconsin.
“There’s a sense of hopelessness,” he said. “Some people feel like `If we’re not going to go anywhere, I’m going to make sure nobody else is going anywhere.’”
Be careful when buying gift cards on a display rack at a store. They could be a target for fraudsters.
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