Manpower Survey Reveals Startling Facts About Future Energy Staffing
Manpower released a report on May 5th that details that one of the greatest challenges facing the energy sector over the next decade will be in finding qualified talent to operate and maintain the nations electrical power supply and generation.
This report comes out when some utilities are their fighting workers on almost every frony when it comes to wages, benefits and retirement.
The report focuses on current trends in the industry and offers some startling statitics:
Average age of current utility workers: 46
Percentage of workers over 50 years of age: 50%
Percentage of wokers who can retire in 2 years: 36%
Percentage of utility workers retiring in the nest 10 years: 60%
Number that COULD retire RIGHT NOW: 18,000
Even more amazing is the statistics from the point of view of energy executives. 86% say that utility workers need a more complex skill set than just 5 years ago. 90% say that frontline workers require higher levels of technical competency that just 5 years ago. Almost three quarters agree that the ability to attract quality candidates to the energy industry will have an impact on North America’s ability to compete for decades to come.
Click here to view the report.
Safety Suffers When Unions Suffer
Part of being union is having a voice in the workplace. Having a voice in the workplace means that you have protection and mechanisms in place if your employer takes any action to muzzle your legitimate complaints.
An employer in Jacksonville, Florida, is feeling the wrath of OSHA after a senseless workplace tragedy that took the life of a 32 year old worker. The death is senseless because OSHA required safegaurds were not in place and the employee lost his life because of this.
According to an OSHA press release (click to view):
“In August 2013, a 32-year-old machine helper entered a large wire mesh manufacturing machine to retrieve a fallen metal bar, and he was struck and killed by a part that feeds the wire into the machine’s welding area. The light curtain that would have automatically turned the machine off before he entered the danger zone had been disabled. Proper operation of the machine’s guards, a basic Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirement, would have saved his life.”
For that, a young employee is dead and the employer faces proposed fines totalled $697,700.00 dollars and additional violations has landed the employer on the Severe Violator Enforcement Program.
“This was a preventable and senseless tragedy,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. “When employers are serious about safety, everyone benefits. Wire Mesh Sales LLC failed to properly implement OSHA safety regulations, and a worker paid the ultimate price.”
OSHA proposes fines for the eight per-instance willful violations. A willful violation is one committed with intentional knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirements, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health.
It is conditions such as these that should not be allowed in America. You have heard it said that America’s biggest export is our manufacturing jobs, while our biggest import is third world working conditions. The fact that 56 of these workers were not even native English speaking is a pretty strong indicator that these workers were not unionized.
The reason the U.S. leaders cannot agree on real immigration reform is partly because the party backed by Big Business wants these workers who will work for less than a living wage and are hard to organize because of their legal status and a serious language barrier. Another group of politicians want the illegals because the family they have in this country who are legal will always vote for them.
Both American political parties are equally guilty for lack of immigration reform.
One hard lesson for all unions is that a union must work for and protect the rights of ALL workers. That lesson has been learned and union membership is again on the rise. Illegal workers can’t do it for us, it takes American workers acting like Americans to get this done so we can apply those lessons learned of inclusion of all workers regardless of age, race, sex, national origin, or sexual orientation; not taking our unions for granted and becoming lulled in to lethargy; and holding our elected officials responsible for the things they fight for and fight against.
Who Owns West Virginia?
The West Virginia Center On Budget and Policy released an interesting report on just who the largest corporate landowners in West Virginia are and how these patterns have been changing.
Purchase of West Virginia’s land by timber management companies is perhaps the most interesting finding by investigators for this report, researchers also found:
- The top 25 private owners own 17.6 percent of the state’s approximately 13 million private acres.
- In six counties, the top ten landowners own at least 50 percent of private land. Of the six, five are located in the southern coalfields – Wyoming, McDowell, Logan, Mingo and Boone. Wyoming County has the highest concentration of ownership of any county.
- Not one of the state’s top ten private landowners is headquartered in West Virginia.
- Many of the counties – including Harrison, Barbour, Mineral, Lincoln, and Putnam – that had high concentrations of absentee corporate ownership (over 50%) in Miller’s 1974 study did not in this analysis.
- Only three corporations that were among the state’s top ten landowners in 1974 remained on that list in 2011. If the sale of MeadWestvaco properties to Plum Creek Timber is completed, only two of the 1974 top owners will still be on the list.
- Nationally timberland management concerns control about half of the nation’s timberlands that had been managed by industrial timber companies until the 1980s.
Workers Standing Together Still Middle Class America’s Best Defense
Tim Paulson is the executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, and his recent article in SF Gate he outlines what many in unions already know; workers standing together is the last line of defense against an ever increaing income gap caused by corporate greed.
Paulson strings together the picture faced by most working Americans, whether they acknowledge it or not. Read his article and you’ll see it doesn’t matter if you’re union or not, east coast or west, or just struggling to stay middle class.
International Union Density
Those who are against unions like to pretend that the labor movement is some homegrown wacko movement that breaks out in a few confined geographical areas of the U.S. that’s usually led by troublemakers. The truth is that the labor movement is a worldwide struggle fought by workers in almost every developed or developing country.
You can read the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report on this by clicking here.
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No Secrets With Open Secrets
Open Secrets is a website dedicated to exposing the elephant in the room in American politics: MONEY! It’s a quality site that’s been used as a research tool by news organizations in discovering who is beholding to who in the political arena. Visit it today and learn!