Reply #42: St Cloud MN Bus Plant lays off 320

[CatholicEdHead]

We still have not turned the employment corner yet.

http://www.startribune.com/57443652.html?elr=KArksDyycyUtyycyUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

ST. CLOUD - It was just five months ago that Vice President Joe Biden 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 Minnesota 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 in August, the company that administration officials had pictured as a stimulus success story began laying off 320 people, or 13 percent of its workforce, 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.

The layoffs at New Flyer are a vivid illustration of the way that some of the economic impact of the $787 billion federal stimulus law is being diluted by the actions that state and local governments are taking to weather the recession.