Jobs In Baltimore

Nearly two out of three existing jobs in the Baltimore metropolitan area are classified as "low-skill," and yet there still aren't enough to go around, according to a study released yesterday.The shortage of jobs for people without enough education, vocational training or computer skills is so pervasive that about three unemployed low-skilled workers exist for every low-skill job available, the report said.What's more, about 40 percent of the jobs for low-skilled workers pay less than $8.50 an hour -- an annual income of $17,000 that the study's researchers say is marginal for building a decent life.

In a reorganization of its U.S. commercial insurance businesses, Zurich Financial Services Group could lay off as many as 850 employees -- including an unspecified number in Baltimore -- a top company official said yesterday.Frank A. Patalano, chief executive of the newly created subsidiary Zurich Services, also said Baltimore is no longer the headquarters for the Swiss company's commercial and small business insurance operations, which will be directed from Schaumburg, Ill. The Baltimore and Schaumburg operations have been folded into another newly created subsidiary, Zurich U.S.Patalano, who works out of Schaumburg and has run the Baltimore operations since Dec. 1, said the company expects to save $80 million to $100 million over the next two years by consolidating redundant operations and cutting costs.

A clothing manufacturer that received more than $1 million in public subsidies to keep jobs in Baltimore said yesterday that it will close its two plants here and move the work elsewhere in the country. More than 300 workers could be laid off.SourceOne Manufacturing Services LLC, a subsidiary of Pietrafesa Corp. of Liverpool, N.Y., said it will close the plants in February. The company said it has been too difficult to find and retain skilled labor in Baltimore. The plants have an annual employee turnover rate of 54 percent, the company said.

They make caulk. They make spackling compound. They make adhesives and roof sealants and window glazing. And now they've just finished making their biggest product of all -- a new world headquarters near downtown Baltimore.DAP Inc., a 133-year-old manufacturer and marketer of home improvement and building products, just completed the first phase of its corporate move from Dayton, Ohio, to Baltimore's harborfront.It is the first office tenant of the American Can Co. complex in Canton, now undergoing a $30 million transformation into an office and retail center near the water's edge.

They had ice cream and cake the other night at the Halethorpe-Relay United Methodist Church on Ridge Avenue to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Halethorpe Improvement Association.Joseph B. Kinsey, a Halethorpe resident who has been active in the association since 1963 and now serves as president, pronounced the evening a success."We have 210 households, which translates into about 400 members, and we're still growing," said Kinsey, 66, a metallurgist who retired in 1995.Kinsey is effusive in his praise of the quiet little community that is 6.9 miles from Baltimore and is bisected by two railroads and such major thoroughfares as U.S. 1, better known locally as Washington Boulevard, and Southwestern Boulevard, Interstate 95 and the Baltimore Beltway.

IT WOULD BE great to create 12,000 jobs in Baltimore and Maryland -- and add $400 million to state and city treasuries. But at what cost? That is the crucial question the Greater Baltimore ++ Committee failed to answer in its recent report on casino gambling.Two years ago, the Tydings Commission studied this same issue in depth. It was handed divergent reports showing casinos could generate as many as 20,000 jobs or lead to the loss of as many as 12,000 jobs at restaurants, bars and race tracks.

Bell Atlantic Corp. yesterday announced as expected that it will expand jobs in Baltimore, adding 132 positions within six months as the company continues to re-engineer itself to meet upcoming competition in the local telephone service business.The move, formally unveiled at a news conference, follows last year's decision to move 600 workers to 1 East Pratt St. and will bring the total number of jobs at the downtown headquarters to 1,416, Bell Atlantic spokesman Michel Daley said.Even when Bell Atlantic was organized differently and included a Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co. of Maryland unit more autonomous than today's Bell Atlantic-Maryland, the Pratt Street building never housed more than 800 people, Daley said.

Job angst dominates barroom bellyachingIn vino veritas?If barroom conversations are any indication, we're obsessed with our jobs these days.Love, the Orioles, politics -- none of that seems important when we're whining into our wine."

When Michel Lettre looks at the numbers, he sees troubles ahead.The figures he's been looking at lately show that the number of jobs in Baltimore's suburbs has grown by more than a third over the last 10 years while the number of jobs in the city has shrunk by 11 percent.As assistant director of the Maryland Office of Planning, it's Mr. Lettre's job to ponder the implications of this trend. One of his concerns is that jobs are being created where there are not enough roads and transit systems, while they are disappearing in an area where such costly infrastructure is already in place but could be lost through neglect.

Employment in Baltimore, touted as one of the nation's few reviving cities in the 1980s, has dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade, as the recession wiped out nearly 29,000 jobs last year.In a gloomy assessment of the recession's impact throughout the state, the U.S. Department of Labor found that the number of jobs in Baltimore dropped more than the rest of the state, and that the state's employment level shrank more than any state in the region."Maryland probably got smacked with a double whammy," said Mark Wasserman, secretary of the state's Department of Economic and Employment Development.

Edith Johns felt lucky that she rarely got sick and never faced big medical expenses. But in August, while running to catch a bus in Baltimore, she tripped and broke her foot. Her doctor bills came to more than $1,000. Johns, 55, has been without full-time work since December, when she said she was laid off after four years as a file clerk at Russel Motor Cars in Catonsville. Since then she has been without medical insurance. "After you lose your job, they sent me something about COBRA," health insurance for the unemployed, she said.

Is the future of a new East Baltimore becoming evident on Washington Street just north of Johns Hopkins Hospital? On a long walk through this decimated and emptied neighborhood, it was easy to see where nearly 1,200 houses (on 100 acres) were knocked down. The empty space created by all that demolition provokes strong emotions. I thought of how the Inner Harbor looked in the mid-1970s or the Charles Center in the 1960s. While walking up a hill, I looked out at landmarks in the distance - the graceful tower on St. Francis Xavier Roman Catholic Church and the stonework on the former Knox Presbyterian Church.

Frederick Malcolm Ray, who led choirs and played the organ at churches across the region, died July 6 of Alzheimer's disease at Arden Courts, a care facility in Pikesville. The former Social Security Administration employee and chaplain's assistant in the Navy was 87. Mr. Ray was born the 11th of 13 children in Carthage, N.C. World War II interrupted his undergraduate studies at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. After serving in the States, he earned a bachelor's degree in sociology in 1952 from what was then Morgan State College and in 1973, a professional certificate in social work from the University of Maryland.

Acknowledging that job losses are likely with the merger of Constellation Energy Group Inc. and Florida-based FPL Group Inc., executives tried yesterday to reassure workers that any reductions would be handled through attrition and retirements. No layoffs are expected during the next year as the two companies that will be known as Constellation Energy close their deal. A work force reduction of less than 10 percent is expected, according to a slide presentation to employees that was included in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that company officials made yesterday.

Donald Allan Goldman, a Baltimore businessman and former Holiday Spas executive, died of cancer Sunday at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 71, and a resident of Phoenix in Baltimore County. Mr. Goldman was born in Baltimore and raised on Eastern Avenue. He attended City College and served in the Army from 1953 to 1955 in Puerto Rico. He held several sales jobs in Baltimore before joining Holiday Spas, where he was executive vice president from 1967 until retiring in 1991. That year, he purchased Calvert Discount Liquors, a well-known Cockeysville wine shop, which he operated until selling the business in 2002.

ICC to take southern path The Intercounty Connector linking Gaithersburg to Interstate 95 will be built along a southerly route that state and local officials have backed for decades, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. announced. Federal officials have warned of environmental disruption. Housing average tops $300,000 The average price of a house in the Baltimore area raced across the $300,000 mark for the first time last month. The average price hit $309,090 last month, a jump of more than 17 percent compared with last year.

BD Biosciences formally ushers in a new $6.5 million plant that is adding more than 100 jobs in Baltimore County with a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday. The company, a division of Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based BD Inc., formerly known as Becton Dickinson, built the plant in Sparks after its purchase of a rival company, Detroit-based Difco Laboratories Inc., in 1997. BD closed four Difco plants in the Midwest. Michael M. Meehan, vice president and general manager of BD Biosciences, said the company decided to consolidate production here for several reasons: The company manufactures other health care products in Sparks and Hunt Valley; the large number of universities in the area provide a steady stream of employees; and the location is near the port of Baltimore -- an important consideration since 45 percent of the products are shipped overseas.

A clothing manufacturer that received more than $1 million in public subsidies to keep jobs in Baltimore said yesterday that it will close its two plants here and move the work elsewhere in the country. More than 300 workers could be laid off.SourceOne Manufacturing Services LLC, a subsidiary of Pietrafesa Corp. of Liverpool, N.Y., said it will close the plants in February. The company said it has been too difficult to find and retain skilled labor in Baltimore. The plants have an annual employee turnover rate of 54 percent, the company said.

Nearly two out of three existing jobs in the Baltimore metropolitan area are classified as "low-skill," and yet there still aren't enough to go around, according to a study released yesterday.The shortage of jobs for people without enough education, vocational training or computer skills is so pervasive that about three unemployed low-skilled workers exist for every low-skill job available, the report said.What's more, about 40 percent of the jobs for low-skilled workers pay less than $8.50 an hour -- an annual income of $17,000 that the study's researchers say is marginal for building a decent life.

In a reorganization of its U.S. commercial insurance businesses, Zurich Financial Services Group could lay off as many as 850 employees -- including an unspecified number in Baltimore -- a top company official said yesterday.Frank A. Patalano, chief executive of the newly created subsidiary Zurich Services, also said Baltimore is no longer the headquarters for the Swiss company's commercial and small business insurance operations, which will be directed from Schaumburg, Ill. The Baltimore and Schaumburg operations have been folded into another newly created subsidiary, Zurich U.S.Patalano, who works out of Schaumburg and has run the Baltimore operations since Dec. 1, said the company expects to save $80 million to $100 million over the next two years by consolidating redundant operations and cutting costs.