Pols Clueless On How to Save Jobs

More blue-collar jobs leave town, politicians still don't know how to save the city's working class

Bazzini's Nuts Moves Out of the Bronx

In the last two years, the Bronx alone has lost more than 360 union jobs paying $18 to $20 an hour with good benefits after Stella D'Oro and Old London shut bakeries. They left town looking for cheaper, nonunion labor. Wonder Bread decamped from Queens in January because the company found it impossible to compete with modern bakeries from its 1870s plant in Jamaica. Sabra Dipping Co., the world's biggest hummus maker, stripped Queens of 200 jobs when it moved to a factory in Virginia last year. 

New York's political class hasn't a clue how to stem the losses. The best that's been offered is the insane idea to have taxpayers subsidize wages in the private sector. That kind of thinking by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz killed the Kingsbridge Armory Mall and 2,200 jobs in 2009. He said he would rather have no jobs than jobs paying less than his ideal salary. What he got was no jobs, and that's what he keeps getting more and more of. (NYDN Ed) * The NYC Council will hold a hearing on May 12 on a controversial living wage bill.

Facts on the Economic Meltdown

Budget Deficit: 5 billion this year18 billion by 2013 - Citizens Budget Commission

Before the Crash and Layoffs NYC received 22% of its budget from Wall Street

500 residential projects are stalled in NYC

New construction is down from 2008 30,000 to 6300 (Mostly Pubic Infrastructure Work)

Private construction market collapsed

848,000 New Yorkers out of work 10% in the city

Pension benefits go up 55 % in next three years

As manufacturing jobs left New York used the government payroll to increase education health care jobs State's ink a deeper shade of redNew York to enter negative cash flow; first time in recent memory

Dismal upstate census numbers show Albany overtaxation and regulation are driving people out of NY (DN Ed)