LAYOFFS * Canada - States Cut Back and Layoffs Hit Even Recipients of Stimulus Aid
Recalling the vice president’s visit to the New Flyer factory in St. Cloud, Minn., Mayor David Kleis said ruefully, “The expectations were just very high here after that town hall meeting”
Winnipeg,Manitoba,Canada -The New York Times, by MICHAEL COOPER -September 4, 2009: — It was just five months ago that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the New Flyer bus factory here a symbol of the stimulus. With several cabinet secretaries in tow, he held a town-hall-style meeting at the factory, where he praised the company as “an example of the future” and said that it stood to get more orders for its hybrid electric buses thanks to the $8.4 billion that the stimulus law devotes to mass transit... But last month, the company that administration officials had pictured as a stimulus success story began laying off 320 people, or 13 percent of its work force, having discovered how cutbacks at the state level can dampen the boost provided by the federal stimulus money. The Chicago Transit Authority did use some of its stimulus money to buy 58 new hybrid buses from New Flyer. But Chicago had to shelve plans to order another 140 buses from them after the state money that it had hoped to use to pay for them failed to materialize. The delayed order scrambled New Flyer’s production schedule for the rest of the year, and led to the layoffs... So far David Wahl, 52, who had worked there for a decade, filed for unemployment benefits, and a couple of days after his 52nd birthday, he drove to the Workforce Center in Crow Wing County to see if he might qualify for help getting a driver’s license allowing him to become a long-haul truck driver... Labels: layoffs
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