Manufacturing Jobs

Many forces in state must pull together to save manufacturingThe editorial "Saving jobs on Broening Hwy. . . ." (Jan. 16) is an excellent example of the importance of manufacturing jobs to the state's economy. I applaud The Sun for the attention it gives to General Motors, and I encourage the newspaper to examine in greater detail the overall picture of Maryland manufacturing.Employment in manufacturing has been reduced by a fifth over the past 15 years, according to the Regional and Economic Studies Institute at Towson University.

Polk Audio Inc., a Baltimore-based loudspeaker maker that has transferred many of its jobs out of state, yesterday reported a 58 percent drop in net earnings for the fourth quarter.The company said in March that it expected at least a 40 percent drop in earnings for the quarter, which ended March 28.Earnings fell to $560,000, or 30 cents a share, compared with $1.3 million, or 71 cents a share, for the corresponding period a year ago. Net sales for the quarter were down 19 percent to $17.1 million.

Katzenberg Brothers Inc., an athletic wear manufacturer in Baltimore, said yesterday that it will lay off its entire staff of 160 employees in four weeks before it relocates its operations to Georgia.The privately held manufacturer and marketer of customized sports apparel -- which has facilities near Television Hill -- will consolidate with its parent company, Hartwell Industries Inc., in Hartwell, Ga., said Bill Burdyck, Katzenberg's vice president of operations.Katzenberg, which was founded in 1904, was acquired by Hartwell in November 1997.

The Chicago Tribune said in an editorial Saturday:THE astonishing American job machine -- the economic equivalent of the meteorological El Nino -- continues to confound. By all rights, the U.S. economy shouldn't have created more than a quarter of a million jobs in November, any more than we should have experienced record high temperatures in December. But it did.Industrial declineThe Asian financial crisis and its double whammy of cheaper imports and evaporating export markets certainly has taken its toll on the manufacturing sector.

RECENT layoffs at the General Motors Corp. plant on Broening Highway have again raised questions about the future of the region's economy, particularly its manufacturing base. Because of the United Auto Workers union strikes at GM parts plants in Flint, Mich., the Baltimore plant doesn't have enough parts to continue production. Some 3,000 GM employees here have been forced to sign up for unemployment benefits.The strike is causing massive pain as workers lose between $500 and $1,000 a week in income -- roughly $2 million per week in lost earnings.

Aluminum products maker Alcore Inc. intends to consolidate its headquarters and manufacturing operations in Harford County and hire about 120 new employees by early next year, a move that will nearly double its work force.Just as importantly, the company's planned June move represents the first significant step in a drive to expand Harford's manufacturing employment base, after years of landing some of Maryland's largest distribution centers."Alcore enhances the county's reputation as a place for manufacturers to be," said Paul Gilbert, director of the county's economic development office.

The boss called to say you've been replaced by a 21-year-old part-timer who'll work for no benefits and a Starbucks gift certificate.Or maybe you're in college and just starting to think about life beyond Rush Week.It's 1997 - where do you turn for a paycheck?Maryland is not a bad place to be facing that question, according to experts. The Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson State University expects statewide employers to add 44,800 jobs to their payrolls this year, a 2 percent growth rate that tracks generally with national expectations.

At 18, Montez King was making about $10 an hour as an apprentice machinist. A couple of years later, he bought land to build a house.Now 24, King earns between $40,000 and $50,000 a year, which makes the fact that he's a few credits short of his two-year community college degree seem beside the point.Workers similar to King, a programmer at Ward Machinery Co. in Cockeysville, are in heavy demand as Maryland employers try to fill high-skill manufacturing jobs."People think being a machinist is a blue-collar job," said King, an alumnus of Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School in Baltimore.

WASHINGTON - Maryland ranks 19th in the country for attracting jobs from U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, and Virginia ranks 12th, according to the Organization for International Development, a nonprofit trade association.Robert Riva, an economist at the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Towson State University, said having both states among the top 20 is good for the region. Virginia is doing better, he said, for a variety of reasons, including politics."Gov. George Allen was very aggressive in his recruitment of companies to Virginia," Riva said.

Polk Audio Inc. yesterday said it laid off about 20 Baltimore employees as part of a restructuring that will move Baltimore warehousing, servicing and manufacturing jobs to San Diego.The restructuring, to be completed within 90 days, will leave Polk with about 100 employees in its Baltimore headquarters."I think our situation is that business conditions in our market have become difficult," said George Klopfer, Polk chief executive officer. "Quality and efficiency is more important than ever."

On this Labor Day, as most of us enjoy an additional day off, many Marylanders - those who are unemployed - would like nothing better than to no longer have to rest from their labors. What can we do to put them back to work? This summer, Gov. Martin O'Malley convened 16 business and educational leaders for the first meeting of the Governor's International Advisory Council. Our mission was to suggest ways to increase exports from our state and figure out how to attract foreign companies to establish beachheads in Maryland, generating local jobs.

I e-mailed a guy I know and received the following "out of office" reply: "On October 30, 2008 Verizon tapped me on the shoulder with the Reduction In Force package. Hence, I am no longer in the office. If you need to contact me you have my number. It has been a pleasure working with you. Maybe our paths will cross again!" I guess I'll have to call the guy on his cell phone, assuming he still has one. Next night, I bumped into another guy I hadn't seen in a while. We talked about our kids for a minute, and then he said he'd just lost his job. Company folded.

This month, the University System of Maryland launched an information campaign to help put more students on a college-bound path at an earlier age. It's a welcome development, because the United States, accustomed to leading the world in higher education, is now facing a shortage of college graduates. (The state's independent colleges and universities, Morgan State University, St. Mary's College and Maryland's 16 community colleges have established similar initiatives.) By the end of the next president's first term, there will be 3 million more jobs requiring a bachelor's degree and not enough college graduates to fill them; 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs, 60 percent of all new jobs and 40 percent of manufacturing jobs will require some form of postsecondary education.

A veteran of Baltimore's civil rights movement called yesterday for the city's churches and other institutions to come together to defeat poverty, homelessness and drugs, telling a conference at the University of Baltimore that the poor cannot do it on their own. Recalling how the faith community worked together during the 1968 riots to provide bread and milk in the stricken areas and to calm angry residents, the Rev. Marion C. Bascom said that that...

Once upon a time, the United States was the world's most powerful economic engine, a job-producing machine that propelled a broad swath of its citizens into a comfortable middle class. They bought tidy little houses they could afford. They bought big, shiny Chevrolets and Fords with bench seats. They used their health insurance to pay for the occasional tonsillectomy or appendectomy. They retired with pensions generous enough to purchase nice gifts for the grandkids. That period of broad prosperity was relatively short, no more than 50 years after the end of World War II, but it looms large in the national psyche, supplying the cultural icons and touchstones that furnish the "American dream."

ATLANTA -- About 70 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, a striking indication of a profound malaise not seen since the days of Jimmy Carter. In 1980, Ronald Reagan not only defeated Mr. Carter in his re-election bid, but Mr. Reagan also ushered in an era of Republican dominance that lasted for a generation. President Bill Clinton had a great run, capitalizing on a heady time when the Berlin Wall was but a memory to consign budget deficits to the dustbin (temporarily)

The newly formed Carroll County Manufacturing Consortium is trying to change the image of manufacturing jobs by expanding college credit for on-the-job and online training in machine technology while encouraging more students to enter the field. Representatives from numerous companies in the county, including the Fairlawn Tool & Die Co. in Hampstead and Flowserve Pump Division in Taneytown, have scheduled a meeting Aug. 2 with staffers from Carroll Community College, the public school system and the county Department of Economic Development.

A boat maker said yesterday that it will close one of its two plants near Cumberland, a loss of 115 jobs and the second blow in a week for manufacturing-dependent Allegany County. Illinois-based Brunswick Corp. blamed a tough marine-sales environment for its decision to shutter by mid-2007 its Western Maryland plant that makes Bayliner runabouts. A sister plant that produces Trophy fishing boats and employs about 125 will remain open, said Dan Kubera, a spokesman for Brunswick. NewPage Corp.

HAGERSTOWN -- It's never good news when one of the best employers in town prepares to cut about 600 jobs. But in an odd way, the grim announcement at Volvo's manufacturing plant here is a sign of how far this Western Maryland community has come. A generation ago, the reductions -- a third of the plant's work force -- would have been a devastating blow for an economy that depended heavily on a few large manufacturers. Now, officials think Hagerstown and the surrounding county of about 142,000 people can shrug it off, even if most other employers can't match Volvo's pay rates.

WASHINGTON -- Daniel McGee's parents were apprehensive when their son turned his back on the college degree they assumed he would earn. A bachelor's degree was the key to success in the modern economy, and their son was on track to earn one, with athletic honors, a 3.0 grade point average at his Minnesota high school and scholarships in hand. But as McGee saw it, his future lay in the old-world industry of metalworking. And to succeed, he would have to do something that would shock many parents: turn down the scholarships and study machine-tool technology at a two-year technical college.