“took a knife and cut my heart out” Landlords stab tenants in the back! “wild swings in currency” killing shoe stores? : U.S. Job Losses & Closings 28 – 29 February 2016

Incomplete list of job loss announcements and shutdowns.

Alabama: ‘Elected lawmakers’ have shit-canned a proposal to increase minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.  The minimum wage increase was an attempt by the ‘lawmakers’ of the city of Birmingham to increase living standards for the residents, but state level ‘lawmakers’ stepped in and passed their own law forbidding cities from setting their own wage standards!

California: Ojai Unified School District is deciding the fate of five elementary schools due to what I call Disappearing Students Syndrome and (this is so typical of California) the school’s property values!  Local news reports say greedy school administrators have already met with local real estate agents about selling off the schools!  By the way, last year it was discovered that embezzlement was being conducted by some Ojai district employees.  A reader, and Kmart employee, says the City of Commerce Kmart is shutting down. Several district managers for California Kmarts have been laid off as well.

Colorado: A Kmart employee in California notified Blind Bat News that Sears Holdings plans on shutting down another Kmart in The Centennial State.  Yet another Denver restaurant shutdown.  After 12 years popular Gypsy House Cafe shutting down mid-March due to the greedy property owners selling out without warning the operators of the Cafe.

Connecticut:  Fairfield based federal tax dodger General Electric (GE) just admitted its mass U.S. job culling (through off-shoring of jobs, layoffs and selling their assets) has resulted in their lowest level of U.S. employment in more than two decades!   In 2015 alone GE eliminated 11-thousand U.S. jobs!  GE says it currently employs 125-thousand U.S. citizens, a number not see since 1993! And great news for investors; GE plans to continue to U.S. job destruction!

Florida: Troubled Aramark issued a shutdown WARN for its Florida Gulf Coast University ops, 288 jobs lost by May!  Aramark has been downgraded by investment analysts, and an Aramark prison food service supervisor in Michigan was sentenced to prison time for hiring a prisoner to attack another prisoner!   

Illinois: Local news reports say Chicago Public Schools is expected to begin ‘mid-year’ mass layoffs, today.  Western Illinois University eliminating an additional 1-hundred jobs!  They laid off 30 people in January.  Unconfirmed reports to Blind Bat News that Hoffman Estates based Sears Holdings is shifting most full time employees to part time, calling it a necessary “realignment”!  Also, district and regional management jobs across the country are being consolidated, hundreds of managers will become unemployed!  Without warning, Chicago based Starcom MediaVest Group laid off 80 people.  Administrators called the layoff ‘routine’, implying it had nothing to due with the loss of a major client; Walmart.

Indiana: Traderbakers flea-market in Evansville shutdown after the building they were in was sold out from under their feet.  Yes, even their lease was sold to a major corporation who then said ‘get out’!

Maryland: In Arlington, after five years Tweet Tweet toy store shutting down for “personal reasons”.

Michigan: Battle Creek based shoe seller Wolverine Worldwide announced they must shutdown 1-hundred stores in 2016, that’s on top of the 104 stores they shutdown in 2015!  Their brands include Stride Rite, Merrell, Sperry, and Saucony, and now dead Patagonia Footwear and Cushe.  They also sell the Sebago brand of shoes loved by British empire princess Kate, and their CAT brand shoes are even promoted by the false working class spokesman Mike Rowe.  Interestingly Wolverine Worldwide reported “Performance of our retail stores has improved significantly…”, but blamed the mass store shutdowns on currency wars for “wild swings in currency” that they think will adversely affect their revenues. This is because of where their shoes are made versus where they sell them.  What automotive industry recovery? In what I call Ripple Effect Layoffs, Grand Rapids Plastics eliminating 85 jobs due to the loss of a major customer; Fiat Chrysler.

New Jersey: Enclara Health issued a WARN for their West Deptford operations, at least 1-hundred jobs lost by May!

New York: What automotive industry recovery? In Massena Hamilton’s Automotive Service Center shutting down due to a greedy landlord: “Our building was sold from under us that we faithfully paid and kept up for the past 8 years. It saddens me cause of the loyal and faithful friends and customers we have grown to know and like. It feels like someone took a knife and cut my heart out…”-Kevin Hamilton

North Carolina: In Durham, after 12 years restaurant City Beverage shutdown. Local news reports say the owners have failed to pay $1-million USD in state & federal taxes!  

Two Hawk Employment Services being sued, accused of illegal pre-employment medical inquiries and then using the information to destroy job applications and deny employment!  The accusation comes from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Two Hawk Employment is a privately owned company.

Ohio: The city of Niles eliminated 12 jobs, including most of its police detective positions.

South Dakota: God powerless to stop the shutdown-consolidation of 41 of ‘his’ churches!!!   The Catholic Diocese of Sioux City will begin the drastic operation in Summer 2017, blaming The Rapture, I mean declining membership which results in declining revenues, inadvertently revealing their true god is money.  Some of the surviving consolidated churches won’t even operate on a weekly bases!

Texas: In Dallas, after less than a year restaurant Hickory & Fry shutdown.  Apparently residents of Dallas-Fort worth can’t handle the concept of a tapas bar (reports say it was the only one).  Houston base food distribution giant Sysco says they have to kill more jobs, this time 1-thousand 2-hundred employees will become unemployed over the next 15 months!  Administrators say the economic environment is forcing them to find ways to increase profits without relying on sales (because sales suck).

Virginia: After 137 years (surviving The Great Depression and numerous recessions), more proof the true god is money as the Belle Haven Presbyterian Church announced it will shutdown after the ‘pagan’ Ishtar inspired holiday of Easter: “It’s for sale, someone can turn it into a restaurant if they want to.”-Nancy Bunce, church treasurer

Washington: Maslow Media Group shutting down their Seattle ops by the end of April.

Washington DC: Proof we’re in a deflationary depression?  The U.S. Postal Service is dropping the price of a postage stamp for the first time in 97 years, or is it?  In April the cost of a Forever stamp might drop from 49 cents to 47 cents.  I must point out that the last price increase was only temporary and that time has expired, which is why it should be coming down. However, postal officials are actually begging Congress not to go forward with the price drop.        The president of the United States, Barack Obama, claims his first ‘real’ job was scooping ice cream in Hawaii: “…it taught me some valuable lessons: Responsibility. Hard work. Balancing a job with friends, family, and school.”  My first real jobs (after graduating High School a year early) were part time as a 12F (MOS no longer exists, consolidated with 12B) in the California Army National Guard and as a full time civilian contracted bombing range technician at Edwards AFB!  So Obama becomes president and now I’m unemployed! What does that teach me?

WARN=Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification

27 February 2016: “They are laying off workers, cutting out their hours, their pay and their rights, and now they can no longer afford living!”-Stephanie Padilha, American Apparel employee 

Former employees who receive severance are not counted as unemployed

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) no longer issues mass layoff reports: “On March 1, 2013, President Obama ordered into effect the across-the- board spending cuts (commonly referred to as sequestration) required by the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act, as amended. Under the order, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) must cut its current budget by more than $30 million, 5 percent of the current 2013 appropriation, by September 30, 2013. In order to help achieve these savings and protect core programs, the BLS will eliminate two programs, including Mass Layoff Statistics, and all ‘measuring green jobs’ products. This news release is the final publication of monthly mass layoff survey data.”