The Alpha and Omega of Illinois jobs

Bill Knight column for 10-28, 29 or 30, 2019

 “Sunrise, sunset,” goes the song, and when it comes to good news and bad for Illinois workers, it increasingly seems that the way of the world makes every glimmer of hope darkened by disappointment,

Amazon this month announced plans to open a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in suburban Chicago that the company says will employ about 500 people when it opens next fall.

Reportedly, Amazon’s forthcoming Channahon location will be one of some 20 facilities opened or planned for Illinois, joining sites in Joliet, Monee, Romeoville and Skokie.

But…

… more than 850 people working in Illinois manufacturing, retail and other employment sectors are losing their jobs, according to the state Department of Labor.

The biggest mass layoff is occurring at Champaign’s News-Gazette Media, which is selling its daily newspaper, shoppers, websites and three radio stations serving markets in eastern Illinois to Community Media Group, a West Frankfort, Ill., chain that publishes newspapers throughout the Midwest and parts of New York and Pennsylvania.

About 130 workers are affected by that sale.

Elsewhere, three factories are cutting jobs totaling 320 positions: Advance Engineering Corp. in Elgin (114 jobs), which is moving, Gates Industrial Corp. in Galesburg (120 jobs), which in a prepared statement said, “This transition is a necessary decision to further enhance our support of our in-region and for-region production philosophy, as well as to optimize our footprint and increase overall operational efficiencies” (whatever that means), and Chicago Powdered Metal Products (86 jobs), which provided no explanation at all.

Two huge retail companies also detailed layoffs, and they were tied to bankruptcies. Chicago’s swanky clothing store Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy, laying off 128 workers, and Transform KM Stores of Illinois – operating pharmacies in Kmart locations and affiliated with Sears – announced it’s laying off 91 workers.

Sears filed for bankruptcy last year and emerged as the Transform company, which still operates 425 stores with 45,000 workers. (Sears also is reportedly laying off 250 employees at its Hoffman Estates headquarters.)

Workers at two other companies also face unemployment. Starting Friday (Nov. 1), Nestle USA is reorganizing and laying off 121 workers at its Glendale Heights dairy and food-product wholesaler, and Dedicated Logistics in Aurora is laying off 61 workers from its trucking firm after it said it lost a contract.

Unions represent workers at three of the eight companies:

* The Communications Workers represent workers at the News-Gazette,

* the Chemical & Production Workers sector of the International Union of Allied Novelty and Production Workers have a bargaining unit at Chicago Powdered Metal Products, and

* the Steel Workers represent employees at Gates, where about 100 of them will keep their jobs for the time being.

Illinois’ job losses in the last 90 days total about 7,000, according to data from the Illinois Department of Labor’s WARN list based on the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and other reports.

So, declarations that the economy is booming may have momentary proof, such as Amazon’s expansion, but other evidence points to businesses that either continue to struggle or just sacrifice their labor forces and communities for their shareholders.

Football is a funny game

Bill Knight column for 10-24, 25 or 26, 2019

Between last weekend’s University of Illinois upset win over No. 6 Wisconsin Badgers and the Chicago Bears’ 36-25 loss to the New Orleans Saints, we’re reminded that the gridiron can be a load of laughs.

With a nod to the late Joe Garagiola – whose career after retiring from Major League Baseball included stints as a colorful broadcaster and as author of “Baseball is a Funny Game” – FOOTBALL is a funny game, too. And besides amusement at on-field action and antics, the sport has been featured in many movie comedies over the decades.

            They range from cartoons (Disney’s “How to Play Football,” starring Goofy, and Tex Avery’s “Screwball Football”) and team frolics (Our Gang’s “Pigskin Palooka” and the Ritz Brothers’ “Life Begins at College”), to decent outings by Martin and Lewis (“That’s My Boy”) and Craig T. Nelson (ABC-TV’s “Coach”), and even 2000’s “The Replacement” (funny except for the premise that strike-breaking scabs are hilarious).

Here are football comedies to seek out and enjoy (11 of them, in honor of 11-man squads, of course):

“Eleven Men & A Girl” (1930). Joe E. Brown plays the only talent on a college football team, which loses every game. Desperate, he persuades the coach’s daughter (Joan Bennett) to recruit new players, leading to romantic conflicts before the Big Game.

“The Freshman” (1925). This silent picture from Harold Lloyd was one of the first movie comedies focusing on football. A guy’s first year at college is “highlighted” by trying out for the team and starting – as a tackling dummy. Brooks Benedict co-stars.

“The Game Plan” (2007). Dwayne Johnson stars in a family comedy about an NFL quarterback enjoying a bachelor lifestyle and then discovering that an old relationship resulted in an 8-year-old daughter (Madison Pettis). Struggling with parenting and extended-family conflicts, the ‘baller eventually is charmed by his girl, who captivates the whole team. Kyra Sedgwick co-stars.

“Hold That Lion” (1952). The Bowery Boys somehow go to college, but they benefit from “vitamins” making them stellar athletes. Maybe weird foreshadowing of steroid use, but funny.

“Horse Feathers” (1932). One of the best Marx Brothers films has Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo trying to fix a college football game. Classic silliness ensues. Thelma Todd co-stars.

“Leatherheads” (2008). Set in the 1920s when pro football was rougher, this stars George Clooney and John Krasinski, who end up falling for Renee Zellweger, a reporter who wants to expose the team’s cheating.

“The Longest Yard” (1974). Directed by Robert Aldrich, this stars Burt Reynolds as an ex-football player and ne’er-do-well sentenced to prison, where warden Eddie Albert is obsessed with football played by inmates and guards. Maybe less funny than Adam Sandler’s 2005 remake, it’s a better movie. Oddly similar to 1932’s romp “Hold ‘Em Jail” (as in “Hold’em, Yale!”), this features Bernadette Peters, Richard Kiel and Ed Lauter.

“North Dallas Forty” (1979). Nick Nolte and Mac Davis are two likeable rascals playing for an NFL team based on the Cowboys. Balancing the sports and celebrity, off-the-field escapes and goofy ownership, they survive and thrive. Charles Durning, Bo Svenson and John Matuszak are featured

“Semi-Tough” (1977). A romantic comedy with football as a backdrop, stars Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson as two sides of a triangle with Jill Clayburgh (daughter of team owner Robert Preston). It co-stars Carl Weathers, Brian Dennehy and (!) Bert Convy.

“Three Little Pigskins” (1934). The Three Stooges are down-and-outers who think they’re needed to promote a football game but instead find themselves hired by college recruiters to play. A 23-year-old Lucille Ball co-stars.

“The Waterboy” (1998). Adam Sandler stars as a 30-something college-football waterboy in Louisiana, where he loses his temper and shows amazing skills his coach (Henry Winkler) puts to use. Kathy Bates and Jerry co-star.

Union actions encourage ‘professional’ employees

Bill Knight column for 10-21, 22 or 23, 2019

Within hours on Thursday, the United Auto Workers reached a tentative settlement in its 31-day work stoppage at General Motors, and the Chicago Teachers Union went on strike, both showing strength in the traditional job action. Such flexing of muscles also encouraged a renewal of another alternative approach to workplace democracy.

Autoworkers reportedly achieved substantial gains in a four-year contract, which could raise pay, include lump-sum payments and a signing bonus, maintain good health insurance, establish a corporate commitment to manufacture electric trucks at a plant set for shutdown, and improving times for temporary workers to become full-time and those paid “second-tier” wages to get regular pay. That’s all IF it’s ratified by a cautiously optimistic rank-and-file, who won’t return to work until the approval of a deal (the offer reportedly includes accepting GM closing three of the four factories they targeted for shutdown.)

Meanwhile, teachers had enough of slow bargaining, public attacks and disappointing offers, and 32,500 unionists hit picket lines even as negotiations continued.

Both actions assert determination to expand demands to benefit Americans beyond union members, from communities and small businesses hurt by cuts to schoolkids needing smaller classes and increased staff like librarians, nurses and social workers, plus to recover years of givebacks and cutbacks.

Before the 1980s, “unions were a formidable political force,” wrote journalist Nicholas Kristof. “It’s perhaps not a surprise that their enfeebling has been accompanied by a rise in far-Right policies that subsidize the wealthy, punish the working poor and exacerbate the income gap.”

If factory and public workers are fighting back, so are those often considered “professionals”: analysts, engineers, attorneys, physicians, etc.

Last month, Pittsburgh tech workers employed by Google contractor HCL Technologies USA – part of a multinational company based in India – voted to unionize with the Steelworkers.

HCL is trying to bust the upstart union, but Google is staying neutral, prohibiting HCL’s consultant from holding anti-union meetings on Google property and issuing a statement saying, “whether HC’s employees unionize is between them and their employer.”

Lower-income workers at such tech firms – janitors, guards, drivers – have unionized, mostly with the Teamsters, but professionals have been less inclined to consider the option to organize.

“Right now, the company sets the terms,” said HCL analyst Josh Borden. “There’s no room to negotiate anything. You take what they give you. The only way we see to improve things is to speak with one voice. I hope this lets all tech workers know that this is possible and extremely do-able.”

Meanwhile, employees at private institutions working as teaching or graduate assistants are resisting a September decision by Trump’s National Labor Relations Board that reversed a 2016 NLRB ruling that they have the right to bargain collectively.

“This is an evasive and insulting tactic,” said Brown University doctoral candidate Rithika Ramamurthy, “meant to deliberately devalue our work. People should know that the labor movement is building momentum and that the current model of the university is unsustainable and cannot continue forever.”

That’s one reason why UAW Local 2300 at Cornell University, representing more than 1,000 workers, is still going strong after more than 30 years, and many other higher-education workers have organized since.

In medicine, the Union of American Physicians and Dentists (affiliated with AFSCME and the AFL-CIO) and the United Steelworkers both organize doctors and other health professionals, who often cite problems with working conditions and disrespect by administrators.

“Solutions to these issues can be found in union contracts,” said Mandy Rae Hartz, with the USW’s Health Care Worker Council. “As physicians face increasing challenges to retain decision-making power over their schedules, personal economics, and even patient-care practices, forming unions is an effective way to regain professional and personal control.”

Private-practice physicians aren’t employees, unlike those who work for hospitals or other health-care consortiums, so they can’t unionize, but the NLRB in 1974 decided that non-supervisory physicians could unionize.

For example, in Minnesota, USW Local 9460, the Northland's Health Care Workers Union, represents doctors and other health professionals in 16 units such as the Pine Medical Center and clinics in Chequamegon and Essentia.

“For doctors and health-care professionals, a healthy work environment is the best way to take care of patients,” said Dr. Emily Onello, a physician in Lake Superior, Minn.