Job Losses and Top Employers Info is now Secret in Delaware. (Bank of America involved?)

[cyberpj]

Click. That's the sound of another government drawer closing. This one contained a list of the top 50 private employers in Delaware. You, as a citizen, are no longer allowed to see who is on it.

snip-
You also won't need to know how many people are affected when that company changes strategies and eliminates jobs. Or how many people actually lose their jobs when a bigger company takes it over amid promises of no layoffs.

Delaware's government isn't telling any more. It's confidential. U.S. Department of Labor regulations say those lists kept by many states cannot be based on unemployment records. Other states still make public that information, but base it on other sources. Delaware, for the time being, is out of the useful business of supplying citizens such information.

It all came about through the oddest of coincidences. On March 13, The News Journal published an article that stated 3,100 jobs were cut when the Bank of America took over MBNA in 2006, based on the state's list. The Bank of America, for its part, does not release employment figures by state.

Now here's the odd coincidence. On March 14, according to the U.S. Labor Department, Delaware state officials contacted it and asked whether they can give out those employment numbers. It wasn't related to The News Journal story, Delaware officials said. It just happened to be the next day. The federal department said states can't use those unemployment figures for such lists and they have until late 2008 to stop. But -- click -- stopped immediately. The list of Delaware's top 50 employers is no longer any of your business.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070409/OPINION11/704090324/1112/OPINION

[Jillian]

1. I used to work at Bank of America

(In Az)

Once they were a great company to work for. Lots of perks.

Then they became a corporation that didn't care about the customers or the employees. It all became about their bottom line. I was so close to many of my customers. But I couldn't just chat with them anymore, couldn't just be their personal banker... I always had to sell them something! More accounts, more credit cards, more loans. And my bonuses and raises were effected because I wouldn't play their game.

I had it, had an opportunity for something else, and never looked back.

[cyberpj]

2. Welcome to DU. I think your experience mirrors many in corporate jobs. The 80's started this

dash for cash with the very first victorious "downsizing" campaign which was used to puff up shareholder profits when business wasn't all that good. After that it became an art form to figure out how to carve more money out of the employees and into the stockholders.

At first they sold us the "global competition" line to get us to "do more with less" and now it's simply butchering employee benefits like health care and raises.

I guess I'm showing my age but I remember when businesses simply had a bad quarter, or a bad year. When did it become necessary for every single quarter to produce record profits? It's absurd and a fifth grader could figure out that it only fostered the "I'll get mine, the hell with yours" mentality that pervades the US now.

Ok. Stepping off of soapbox now.

Sigh...............