PLANYC 2030

An International Labor Organization’s report released today shows that young workers are among the worst-hit by the global recession. All in all, there are 620 million people aged 15 to 24 who want to work. 81 million are unemployed, the highest level and the greatest number since the ILO started keeping track 20 years ago. Globally, the youth unemployment rate hit 13 percent in 2009, up from 12 percent in 2007. The organization expects the youth unemployment rate to continue rising until 2011.

In the report, the ILO warns of “significant consequences for young people as upcoming cohorts of new entrants join the ranks of the already unemployed” and of the “risk of a crisis legacy of a ‘lost generation’ comprised of young people who have dropped out of the labor market, having lost all hope of being able to work for a decent living.”

Despite its relative wealth, the situation remains parlous for young workers in the United States as well. The unemployment rate is 26.5 percent for teenagers, and 15.7 percent for workers aged 20 to 24. The rate rises to a whopping 47.8 percent for black male teenagers, the demographic group with the highest jobless rate. Despite this, across the country, summer jobs programs for young people were slashed, as Congress failed to re-up federal funding provided in the Feb. 2009 stimulus bill.

 

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block.

A few paces up the street, her undocumented Mexican neighbour Wendi Villasenor touts a kitchen table, some chairs and a few dishes as her family scrambles to get out of Arizona ahead of a looming crackdown on illegal immigrants.

“Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving,” said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. “We have no alternative. They have us cornered.”

The two women are among scores of illegal immigrant families across Phoenix hauling the contents of their homes into the yard this weekend as they rush to sell up and get out before the state law takes effect on Thursday.

The law, the toughest imposed by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration, seeks to drive more than 400,000 undocumented day labourers, landscapers, house cleaners, chambermaids and other workers out of Arizona, which borders Mexico.

It makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and requires state and local police, during lawful contact, to investigate the status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.

The U.S. government estimates 100,000 unauthorized migrants left Arizona after the state passed an employer sanctions law three years ago requiring companies to verify workers’ status using a federal computer system. There are no figures for the number who have left since the new law passed in April.

Some are heading back to Mexico or to neighbouring states. Others are staying put and taking their chances.

In a sign of a gathering exodus, Mexican businesses from grocers and butcher shops to diners and beauty salons have shut their doors in recent weeks as their owners and clients leave.

On Saturday and Sunday, Reuters counted dozens of impromptu yard sales in Latino neighbourhoods in central and west Phoenix/

“They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect,” said Aguilar, 28, a mother of three young children who was also offering a few cherished pictures and a stereo at one of five sales on the same block.

She said she had taken in just $20 as “everyone is selling and nobody wants to buy.”

LEGAL RESIDENTS FLEE

Arizona straddles the principal highway for human and drug smugglers heading into the United States from Mexico.

The state’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed the law in April in a bid to curb violence and cut crime stemming from illegal immigration.

Polls show the measure is backed by a solid majority of Americans and by 65 percent of Arizona voters in this election year for some state governors, all of the U.S. House of Representatives and about a third of the 100-seat Senate.

Opponents say the law is unconstitutional and a recipe for racial profiling. It is being challenged in seven lawsuits, including one filed by President Barack Obama’s administration, which wants a preliminary injunction to block the law.

A federal judge heard arguments from the lawyers for the Justice Department and Arizona on Thursday and could rule at any time.

The fight over the Arizona law has complicated the White House’s effort to break the deadlock with Republicans in Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration law, an already difficult task before November’s elections.

While the law targets undocumented migrants, legal residents and their U.S.-born children are getting caught up in the rush to leave Arizona.

Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix.

“Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime,” she said as she sold children’s clothes at a yard sale with three other families. “They could arrest him for driving me to the shops.”

Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday.

“It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here,” said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.

 

Honda has had to halt production at its four Chinese car assembly factories, because of a strike over pay at one of its China-based parts plants.

The Japanese company said talks were continuing to try to resolve the dispute at the parts facility in the southern city of Fushan.

The strike at the plant, which makes gearboxes and engine parts, started last week.

Honda said it hoped to resume production as soon as possible.
 

Resolution efforts

According to newspaper reports, the 1,900 staff at the parts facility want their monthly wages to be increased from 1,500 yuan ($220; £151) to 2,500 yuan.

“We are still trying to resolve the labour dispute with the help of the local government at the Fushan plant,” said Honda’s China spokesman Zhu Linjie.

Like most of the world’s leading carmakers, Honda has enjoyed a big rise in sales in China.

It sold 219,514 cars in China during the first four months of this year, up 39% on a year earlier.

Honda runs three of its four car assembly factories in China as joint ventures with Chinese carmakers to supply the domestic market.

It has two factories in association with Guangzhou Automobile and one with Dongfeng Motor Corporation.

Honda’s fourth Chinese factory makes its Jazz small car model solely for export.

 

Labor union members led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka marched on Wall Street to demand taxes on bonuses as securities workers said the protesters should go to work and stop demonstrating.

“It’s time for special taxes for bank bonuses,” Trumka told an estimated 7,500 at a rally outside City Hall yesterday that began after trading ended at the New York Stock Exchange. “When you engage in rampant and risky speculation, you are going to pay your fair share in taxes.”

The rally capped a drive by the nation’s largest organization of labor unions called the “Make Wall Street Pay” campaign. Protestors, some dressed as pirates and others wearing prison garb, held signs saying “Break Up Megabanks” and “Hey Big Banks — Less Bail, More Jail.” Rallies have targeted Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm, and the five biggest U.S. banks.

Trumka started the march yelling “Let’s let Wall Street hear us, all the way down to the bull” at Bowling Green, the end point for the protest. They marched under sunny skies with temperatures approaching 70 degrees (21 Celsius).

Brendan Plunkett, 46, a corporate bond trader, was heading home to Essex Falls, New Jersey, as the marchers walked down Broadway.

“If they care so much about the country, they should go to work and be productive and stop with the protests,” he said. “It’s all nonsense to me, and it always will be.”

Ralph Metz, a 29-year-old stock broker for Spartan Capital Securities LLC at 45 Broadway, echoed that sentiment. “People have got to take responsibility for the decisions they make,” he said.

Difference With Goldman

His friend, 31-year-old stock broker John Phillips, said the protestors picked the wrong target by focusing broadly on Wall Street. “There’s a difference between Goldman Sachs and the rest of us,” he said. “A lot of the guys in government used to work for Goldman Sachs.”

Police estimated more than 7,500 people gathered in the park south of City Hall, before the crowd headed south past the stock exchange carrying signs reading “Reclaim Our Democracy” and “Hold Banks Accountable.”

“They are tax dodgers, they aren’t putting anything back into the community,” said Otis J. Loweryberg, 84, a former International Business Machine Corp. worker in Delaware. “They only think about self — self motivation, self-preservation. How do these guys go home at night when people have no food on the table.”

The AFL-CIO, the 11-million-member labor federation, is urging Congress to impose a transaction tax on securities trading to help cover the $900 billion cost for a government jobs program they want lawmakers to create.

Geithner Opposition

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said he opposes the transaction tax, though Trumka told reporters yesterday it is picking up interest within the Obama administration. “We talk about it all the time,” Trumka said. “The conversation is getting better and more analytical.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, opposes the tax, which it says would hurt more than bankers.

Wayne Usilton, 63, a former Chrysler worker from Delaware, said he joined more than 40 other union members from his state on a bus trip to the Manhattan event.

“The average person on Main Street is just fed up with big business and Wall Street manipulation,” Usilton said.