The Skills Portal, June 23, 2009, Tuesday

The Skills Portal

June 23, 2009, Tuesday

The Skills Portal

GSB appoints new Director for entry and middle management programmes

More on Business Schools GSB appoints new Director for entry and middle management programmes The importance of African and ecological wisdom UCT GSB launches pioneering Centre for Emergent Markets Project managers can step up as economy pinches UCT launches landmark course on Real Estate Finance and Securities UCT Graduate School of Business launches change management course Social entrepreneurship becomes an option in tough times, the USB hears UCT research reveals digital divide amongst SMMEs The UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) has appointed Segran Nair, a MBA graduate of the business school in 2005, as the new Director of its entry-level and middle management core academic programmes, the Associate in Management (AIM) certificate programme and the Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration (PDBA).

For Nair, the appointment as AIM and PDBA Director is a homecoming, not only in terms of his return to the business school, but also in that he has just returned to South Africa after a two year stint in the US.

He brings with him substantial experience at universities both in South Africa and the US.

“This is an exciting opportunity to help make a difference in the lives of South Africans and I am looking forward a great deal to working with adult learners and the excellent faculty here at the UCT GSB,” he said.

He added that programmes like AIM and the PDBA, are making a tremendous impact in South Africa.

"These programmes are enabling people in South Africa, and indeed from across the continent, to take leaps forward in their careers.

"Because of the history of South Africa, a programme like AIM, for example, is also making it possible for individuals who may never have had a chance to study at tertiary level to engage academically, build on their experience by adding a recognised qualification, open up new career opportunities for themselves and gain confidence.

“Many of these students return to the business school to undertake more advanced programmes, like the MBA, with confidence. The consistent theme of studying at the UCT GSB is that it is a life changing experience, and it’s one I can attest to,” said Nair.

As an MBA graduate, Nair added that he understands the ethos of the UCT GSB, the ways in which the business school challenges people and the components that contribute to making a programme a transformative experience for students.

"I am looking forward to engaging with lecturers and students to build on these strengths, and continue to ensure the programmes are of the highest academic standards and relevant to students and market needs.

"The culture of openness at the UCT GSB is helping tremendously, and I’m getting an excellent overview of the programmes, as well as of the administrative and student support structures that are in place,” he said.

Nair started his career at Engen Petroleum in 1995 as an Assistant Financial and Cost Accountant, then as a Regional Auditor. He then took an opportunity in the US and joined Cornell University as a Finance Specialist in 1996.

Shortly thereafter he became a Senior Grant and Contract Officer at the University, a post he held until 2003, where he provided expertise and guidance to faculty members and departmental administrators on the formulation and processing of research proposals and funding agreements. He in the same period completed a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell.

He became Assistant Director of the Office of Sponsored Programmes at Cornell in 2003 and then moved to George Mason University as Research Administrative Manager.

Just after his MBA in 2005, he stayed at UCT for a stint in 2006 as Senior Contracts Manager of UCT’s Research Contracts and Intellectual Property Services. He then returned to the US, joining Brown University in 2007 as Associate Director in the Office of Sponsored Projects (Research Administration).

The Post-Standard, June 20, 2009 Saturday

Copyright 2009 Post-Standard

The Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York)

June 20, 2009, Saturday

HEADLINE:

DSS Boss to Ask for More Staff; Request to Oswego County Legislators will be for 27 Caseworkers, Supervisors

BYLINE: By John Doherty Staff writer

BODY:
Oswego County's social services commissioner will ask county legislators next week to significantly increase the number of caseworkers dealing with children in the county.

The request, which calls for hiring 27 additional caseworkers and supervisors, comes on the heels of a report that found the department's child protective unit is severely overworked and understaffed. The current staffing is 40 people.

The plan will be presented to the county Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee on Wednesday. The plan also will be reviewed by the county's finance and personnel committees.

It could go before the full Legislature on July 9 and the first of the new caseworkers could be hired by the end of August.

"I don't like the idea of raising taxes to pay for this, but it's something we may have to do," said Legislature Chair-man Barry Leemann, R-Amboy.

The state has given the county $500,000 to pay for additional staff through March 31.

"That's just seed money to get things started," Leemann said.

The report, prepared by Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, was one of three studies that looked at the social services department after the death of 11-year-old Erin Maxwell.

The girl died Aug. 30 after being asphyxiated in her squalid Palermo home, where more than 100 cats lived. Case-workers had investigated the Maxwell home three times between 2002 and 2006.

Erin Maxwell's stepbrother, Alan Jones, has been charged with her murder. Her father and stepmother, Lindsey and Lynn Maxwell, are facing child endangerment charges.

"One of the highest priorities we have is to protect our kids," Leemann said. "We don't want to have any more tragedies, though I don't believe we were responsible for what happened (to Erin Maxwell)."

The Cornell report found that when Erin Maxwell died, two years after the last social service investigation, case-workers were handling an average of 139 cases a year -- nearly double the national and state standard of 72 cases.

The department's staffing crisis goes back to 2004 when, in the face of a budget crisis, more than 100 county em-ployees lost their jobs, said Legislator John Proud, chairman of the Health and Human Service Committee.

"When we made our staffing cuts back a few years ago, social services was hit very hard," said Proud, R-Mexico. "They reorganized and tried to do things differently to compensate for the loss of personnel. What the report shows is we got people who are too overloaded and that's got to be addressed."

The plan, prepared by Department of Social Services Commissioner Frances Lanigan, calls for increasing the numbers of caseworkers and supervisors in the department's child protective and family services units.

The number of child protective caseworkers would grow from 20 to 36 and the number of supervisors would in-crease from four to seven.

Staffing in the family services unit, which provides on-going help to children and their families, would increase from 16 to 24 caseworkers.

Other positions called for under the plan include additional clerical workers and a supervisor to monitor the de-partment's quality and training.

John Doherty can be reached at jdoherty@syracuse.com and 592-7140 or 470-3235.

LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2009

New York Times, June 19, 2009, Friday

New York Times

June 19, 2009, Friday

New York Times

What Colleges Can Cut
By The Editors

(Photo: David Ahntholz for the New York Times)

Students working at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, this month as part of a campus maintenance program.
Colleges are cutting costs, in big ways (layoffs, hiring freezes) and small (window-washing and free HBO for students).

We asked experts in higher-education finance, college students and recent graduates to suggest ways for colleges to economize.

Cut Bureaucratic Bloat and Duplication

Jane Wellman is the executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, a nonprofit research organization.

Can colleges cut their costs, without harming quality or reducing access to students?

Some can, absolutely. Particularly among the national elite institutions, the last decade has seen increases in spending from an arms race for prestige, not for advancing student success. While these institutions are not characteristic of most colleges and universities, they set the bar for spending elsewhere in higher education and contribute to a growing public belief that colleges have misplaced priorities for spending.

The majority of public institutions have not been increasing spending in the last decade. For them, tuition has gone up in large part because of eroding public funding. That doesn’t mean they are off the hook from having to cut costs and improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Read more…

Reduce the costs of producing degrees by cutting out excess college units and decreasing student attrition.
Where should they look to do that? There are four basic areas:
First, start with administration, operations and maintenance. Administrative costs have been rising faster than academic program costs for the last decade. Colleges can achieve savings through attention to back-office functions, through consolidated purchasing, improvements in energy efficiency and by holding the line on spending for administrators.

Second, consolidate programs by eliminating high cost and low demand ones. Every college has high-cost, under-enrolled programs that are not critical for future community or work force needs. These programs should be eliminated or, if they are essential, consolidated and shared between campuses and made accessible through distance learning.

Third, reduce the costs of producing degrees by cutting out excess units and decreasing student attrition. Most students take far more than the 120 units required for the bachelor’s degree. Improving advising and course scheduling and getting rid of excess credits reduces the costs to institutions and to students. The unit cost of degree production can be reduced by getting more students through to the degree.

The majority of colleges have graduation rates below 60 percent — a far too low level if we are to increase attainment levels. Attrition is a particularly costly problem in graduate education, where unit costs are high and the time it takes to get a degree is way too long, especially when fewer than 50 percent of students are completing degrees.

Finally, too many states have campuses with low enrollments and high costs because they have not grown to scale. These are politically difficult to eliminate and represent important economic and cultural assets to their communities. Still, in this environment, nothing is sacred, and if these facilities can’t be made to be economically viable, they should be consolidated or closed.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


We Can Pay for Our Own Laundry
Cindy Hong is a 2009 graduate of Princeton University, where she majored in public and international affairs. She was a columnist for The Daily Princetonian.

In the midst of the recession, universities need to cut down on superfluous student services while maintaining academic needs. During the “bubble” years, super-wealthy universities lured students in with their large endowments. The idea was that these schools offered the best financial aid, the best academic resources and the best campus life. In addition to fantastic libraries, no-loan grants and summer funding for unpaid internships, we also enjoy small perks like free laundry, free food at college sponsored “study breaks” and free concerts.

But in recent months, even universities with endowments the size of small countries are tightening their budgets. Unsurprisingly, the first things to go are often big ticket items: new academic buildings, labs and courses. Princeton, my alma mater, has pleaded poverty as a reason to not extend library hours and to cut the number of courses offered next semester.

Read more…

Wealthy universities should cut gratuitous student life services.
Though academic expenses are often the most costly, they are also the most essential part of a university. These expenses are not short-term costs on a university balance sheet, but long-term investments for the intellectual growth of its students. Buildings that house larger lecture halls and classrooms will educate students for years to come; departmental funding will support humanities courses that ask students to question values and meanings in life.

Instead, wealthy universities should cut gratuitous student life services. These services are usually viewed as a small price to pay to promote spirit and unity among undergraduate students, they are often poorly attended and over budgeted. Though $100 saved here and $100 saved there don’t add up to much, there is an additional benefit. In the absence of organized study breaks and free laundry, students may learn to be more self-sufficient — an important recession-survival skill.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I Didn’t See a Lot of Excess
Hannah Howard is a 2009 graduate of Columbia College and writes a column, “Served,” for Serious Eats.

I graduated from Columbia College in May. Now, I have an Ivy League degree in creative writing and anthropology, and my parents are about $200,000 poorer.

I loved attending Columbia for the same reasons that made the school my first choice four years ago. New York City is the love of my life. I met smart, remarkable people, a few of whom became great friends. I spent a lot of time in tiny classes arguing about Foucault with freakishly brilliant professors and classmates until my brain hurt.

From my perspective, students are the last spending priority at Columbia. In student housing, where I lived for four years, the water in the showers was either scorching or glacial but rarely tolerable. Infestations might be part of New York’s charm, but our cockroach and mice roommates were amazingly abundant. I sometimes awoke at 4 a.m. to find my roommate chasing mice. He was more successful than our traps at catching the little guys.

Read more…

At the library, I might wait 20 minutes to print something out. During finals time, it might be an hour to get a nook at a desk in which to study.

The creative writing department bought students pizza to celebrate the last day of classes, until my last semester. We were informed the department was cutting costs. My poetry professor somehow arranged to get us some mushroom and sausage pies. The class cheered wildly.

Columbia College estimates that the average cost of attendance for the 2009-2010 academic year will be $54,789. A large pizza at Famous Famiglia goes for $14.95, and it easily feeds four people

As an undergraduate, I never felt like the recipient of perks or even of generosity. At least at Columbia, there are negligible costs to be cut on student life. I’m not sure where the money is going: Lawyers and public relations people fighting for their Manhattanville takeover? Maybe when the campus expands north in Manhattan, there will be space for students to sit and study.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Private Schools Have to Set an Example

Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University and the director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. He is the author of “Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much” and the editor of “What’s Happening to Public Higher Education.”

The last three decades have seen an increase in the dispersion of spending across academic institutions. Spending per student has grown at private institutions relative to public ones and, within the private sector, at well-endowed institutions relative to less well-endowed ones. Thus, the ability of colleges and universities to cut their expenditures without doing serious damage to their educational missions will vary widely across institutions.

Most public higher education institutions have been cutting costs for years. Their tuition increases have been largely because of efforts to at least partially make up for the failure of their state support per student to keep up with inflation.

Personnel costs make up the lion’s share of their budgets and they most surely need to look closely at their administrative and other non-instructional staffing levels. Forcing them to make substantial cuts on the academic side will invariably mean a substitution of cheaper part-time and full-time non-tenure-track faculty for full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty. Research suggests that institutions that make such substitutions see a decline in the graduation rates of their students.

The subset of richer private institutions has long been involved in an “arms race” of spending to attract top students to their campuses. They have much more fat and hence much more flexibility to make cuts in their operations without diminishing the quality of the educational opportunities that they provide for students. In doing so, hopefully they will focus on their public mission and worry about how they can improve access to, and persistence to graduation, for students from all racial/ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, rather than focusing on how they can maximize their perceived private prestige.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Colleges Can’t Do It Alone
Molly Corbett Broad is the president of the American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for higher education in the United States. She is former president of the University of North Carolina.

While it is difficult to make broad recommendations about how a college or university should weather this recession, one thing remains clear: bold leadership is required. Each president is guided by the unique mission of their institution, its financial resources and long-term strategic plan.

But while their goals are the same — protecting the academic core and helping students and families weather tough times — colleges are taking different tacks. Arizona State University has fundamentally streamlined its administrative structure. Hundreds of other institutions — as varied as Washington State University, Beloit College, Harvard University, and the University of California at Berkeley — have implemented layoffs, furloughs, wage reductions, program eliminations, and the delay of major construction projects.

Read more…

Despite such moves, campuses face increasing enrollments as students seek retraining and the economic edge of a college degree. In light of this, cash-strapped institutions are increasing student aid budgets and holding the line on tuition. A number of private institutions, like Syracuse University, have announced their lowest tuition increases in decades. Unfortunately, the economic strain on many state governments has caused them to raise tuition for students attending public institutions.

If access and affordability are limited, an entire generation of students could be lost when our country needs them most. I am pleased federal policymakers have boosted Pell grants and created the American Opportunity Tax Credit, and further increases in student aid could be in the offing. While some states, like Maryland, have funded higher education to keep it affordable, far more — like California and New Jersey — have not. To keep the dream of college alive for all Americans, hard choices are being made, but colleges and universities cannot do it alone.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Deans and the Dining Hall Can Go
Victoria Boggiano is a senior at Dartmouth College. She is the day managing editor at the school’s student newspaper, The Dartmouth.

Colleges and universities should not sacrifice the quality of academics when trying to cut costs, nor should money-saving tactics have a negative impact on students’ day-to-day ability to perform well.

Administrators everywhere are in a bind: revenue coming in is decreasing, while costs are staying the same. They tend to look at the situation a certain way — areas that are the first to get minimized frequently include searches for new faculty and maintenance of 24-hour cafeterias. This is a short-sighted tactic. To save money, schools must instead focus their efforts on cutting extraneous measures that have little impact on the learning process or quality of life.

First, schools often spend thousands of dollars on musical performers or artists. Why? Student bodies are replete with talented young adults who would probably jump at the chance to showcase their abilities on stage or in the student union. There is no need to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars when that money could go toward hiring two new paleontology professors or buying more computers for the math department.

Read more…

I don’t mean to say that popular performers should never be hired (I was thrilled when Three 6 Mafia made a trip to Hanover this spring), but limiting quantity and emphasizing student efforts would go a long way.

Second, though I do make reference to “24-hour cafeterias” above, my college — and likely many others — have a few food places that most students don’t know about or rarely visit. Dartmouth decided that they should be some of the first things to go. I agree. If a dining hall is becoming a financial drain and can be excised without inconvenience to the students, it should be eliminated.

Finally, schools can save money by reducing superfluous staff and administrative faculty. Only two deans are necessary — first-year and upper-class. There is no need for a dean for each grade, nor dozens of assistant deans (though a handful is appropriate). In addition, colleges can replace some of the adult employees working at dining halls, athletic facilities and other college buildings with students that work part-time or in work-study programs.

Every college is unique, and students at each school know the best ways to cut costs. Above all, colleges must ask students what they could stand to lose, using either questionnaires or online surveys.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


We Need a Three-Year Degree
Robert Zemsky is the chairman of The Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania.

For 30 years American colleges and universities have pursued the chimera of lower costs through increased efficiencies — pursuing a destination that is ever promised but never reached.

It is not that colleges and universities do not know how to cut costs — they do. As every president and chief financial officer knows, one reduces expenditures by first cutting current expense — events, travel, books, journals, even a sport or two — and then by reducing payroll through delayed hires, postponed salary increases, furloughs, layoffs, even salary roll-backs.

Read more…

When it comes to college, most families shop up, almost uniformly choosing the higher-price option.
And as every admission dean responsible for recruiting a class and college dean responsible for faculty recruitment knows the cumulative cost of those reductions is often prohibitive.

Despite the public’s willingness to tell pollsters they are shocked and dismayed by the unchecked increase in the price of a college education, when the time comes to send their sons and daughters to college, most families shop up, almost uniformly choosing the higher-price option. Students as well as faculty want the prestige money buys having understood that they are more likely to get what they want from an institution that is adding rather than cutting costs.

From these 30 years of false promises I have extracted two basic lessons. First, no one is going to make higher education more efficient one institution at a time. There is neither market nor academic advantage to trying to do with less while every one else is doing with more. What is required is a system solution, one that brings change to all of higher education simultaneously.

Second, making higher education more efficient requires a fundamental change in the production functions that shape higher education’s instructional programs. And that means changing what faculty do, when and where they do it, and the time it takes both faculty and students to complete their assigned tasks. My horse in this race is making the three-year baccalaureate degree the standard across all American higher education.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Go Green
Edward Mitchell graduated from Morehouse College in 2009 with a B.A. in political science and will attend Georgetown University Law Center in the fall. He was editor in chief of The Maroon Tiger, the student news organization.


Although schools should not hesitate to do what is needed, they must avoid any budget cuts that will make bad situations worse. Avoid cuts that will negatively affect quality of education or scare off prospective students. Cutting full-time faculty must be a last resort, as should any reduction in scholarship funding.

Short of that, though, our tough times call for tough decisions. Smart budget cuts can reduce costs of attendance and compensate for revenue lost in the recent worldwide economic downturn. Start with simple things — reduce campus energy consumption, limit travel, and lower student organizational expenditures.

Read more…

Schools facing substantial, time-sensitive budget problems could reduce the use of adjunct professors, hold off on bonuses, cut funding for school-sponsored campus events and postpone planned administrative or departmental expansions. However, long-term, creative planning is crucial. For example, the use of green technology like solar energy panels on campus buildings could significantly reduce costs in the years ahead.

Different budget cuts will work for different schools, but any cost-cutting measure should be smart and deliberate. Students and families who find it harder and harder to attend and pay for undergraduate or graduate school will likely welcome any action that reduces costs of attendance. However, the key rule of any education-related budget cut must be this: do no harm.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Forget the Light Show
Justin Guiffré is the opinions editor of The GW Hatchet at The George Washington University.

A college degree is an unusual purchase. Our perceptions are tied to the current quality of the institution. A 1968 Corvette will gain or lose value regardless of how Chevrolet is performing. The same is not true with colleges. In 2006, the University of Chicago jumped from No. 15 to No. 9 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. The value of an old Corvette isn’t tied to the value of a new Corvette, while the value of a 2005 University of Chicago degree has grown in only one year to that of a top ten school.

There’s a growing consensus that these rankings are not perfect. When you purchase a college degree there is an expectation that the institution will strive to at least maintain, if not increase, the value of that degree. This means that a college should avoid cost cutting that affects its reputation, like its research staff, and academic performance, such as class size.

Close

The George Washington University, where I am a student, has a legendary taste for the ostentatious. Only two years ago one of the recruiting selling points was G.W.’s Colonial Inauguration, an orientation that included a laser light show at a price of $2,500 per minute (not including labor costs). Between a dour economy, a new university president and the realization that being the poster child of expensive universities was negatively impacting the school, G.W. cut the laser light show without much objection.

The best advice for schools is simply to go after the extravagant. A good orientation program is necessary, but not if it costs five or six figures when that money could be better spent on improving academics. In recent years, schools have raced to add new perks to their package, but most of spending adds no weight toward the value of a degree.

Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, June 22, 2009, Monday

Copyright 2009 Law Bulletin Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin

June 22, 2009, Monday

HEADLINE: In Geneva; he was in his element

BYLINE: MARIA KANTZAVELOS

BODY:
John N. Raudabaugh collected so much paperwork in Geneva that he had to ship a box and pay extra to check an additional suitcase to carry it all home. A partner in Baker & McKenzie LLP, Raudabaugh was on his way back from a conference of a United Nations agency focusing on his area of expertise: the world of work. Raudabaugh, a longtime management-side labor lawyer with a master's degree in labor economics from Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations, was in his element representing U.S. employers as a delegate to the 98th International Labour Con-ference, which this year included a special summit on the global jobs crisis. "It was like graduate school to the nth de-gree -- sitting in the lecture halls," he said.

Raudabaugh, the son of a former college professor of rural sociology, filled many legal pads with notes from the meetings he attended, oftentimes until 10 p.m., six days a week during the conference of the International Labour Or-ganization, which was held from June 3 to Friday. He was fascinated, he said, by the passionate talks on the global jobs crisis delivered by several heads of state and government leaders, such as Brazil's Luiz Incio Lula da Silva and France's Nicolas Sarkozy. "The two of them are very clear about pushing the notion of a global regulation of finance so these problems don't happen again," he said. From his law office in the Prudential Building, where shelves are stocked with books on such topics as labor history and the union movement, Raudabaugh reflected on his experience as a delegate at the conference of the ILO, a tripartite U.N. agency that annually brings together representatives of governments, em-ployers and workers to discuss and adopt international labor standards in the form of conventions and recommendations, and to pass resolutions that provide guidelines for general policy and future activities of the organization. Participating as a delegate to a U.N. agency was a first for Raudabaugh, who joined Baker & McKenzie as a partner three years ago, bringing years of experience as a practitioner and as a member of the National Labor Relations Board in the early 1990s, at the appointment of former President George H.W. Bush. He conceded that he headed to the conference with a few preconceived notions. "I had nothing more than just preconceived notions, based on sort of a U.S.-centric view on things, that it was going to be more of a Euro-centric, socialistic kind of approach to things," Raudabaugh said. "What I discovered was that it's a very open discussion among all parties throughout the world community. I was pleased to see that it was an open-minded discussion, considering multiple viewpoints." Raudabaugh was among about 4,000 dele-gates from the 183 member states who participated in the conference of the ILO, which was founded in 1919 and be-came the first specialized agency of the U.N. in 1946. At the event, he participated in a new committee that was formed to address the impact of the global economic crisis on employment. The committee came up with its "Global Jobs Pact," designed to guide national and international policies aimed at stimulating economic recovery, generating jobs and pro-tecting workers. "It was more of a generalized commentary on the fact that, in the world financial crisis and economic meltdown, it appeared that the impact on workers was not really addressed," Raudabaugh said. "The question was -- without getting into finger-pointing, which did go on initially -- what can the developed world do to help those in the developing world to come out of this recession? And, also very importantly, let's inject the discussion of job loss and economic support now, and not just focus only on the financial market restoration." Raudabaugh also addressed the plenary session of the conference with an overview of a yearlong pro bono project that he and dozens of Baker & McKenzie lawyers recently completed on behalf of the U.N. Development Programme. The project had lawyers looking at issues involving forced labor, child labor and gender inequality, and offering recommendations to the Office of the Global Defender of the Poor on how to create an informal mechanism in developing countries to identify and remedy violations of the U.N. conventions addressing those three areas. Raudabaugh's contribution to the pro bono project fo-cused on the issue of child labor. In 2004, there were 218 million children, ages 5 to 17, working in the world, he said, citing statistics from the ILO. Of those 218 million children, 126 million were engaged in hazardous work. Raised in Virginia, where his father took a job under the Eisenhower administration in charge of the Rural Extension Service, Raudabaugh was influenced by college professors at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to study labor eco-nomics. He thought he'd pursue a doctorate and teach. But he remembered his experiences serving in the Navy as an aide to a senior supply corps admiral, which had him dealing with labor issues at ports where civilian workers were represented by unions. "I started thinking that was pretty interesting, so I took a deviation and went on to law school [at the University of Virginia School of Law]," he said. When he's not representing senior management in complex labor relations matters and related litigation, and when he's not taking family trips, or reading and bike riding with his 11-year-old son, the self-described "Internet nerd" is delving into the world of labor law and labor economics via blogs and Twitter; he's an arena player on politico.com. Elizabeth E. Stern, a partner in Baker & McKenzie's Washington, D.C., office, where she heads the global migration and executive transfers group, served on the pro bono project with Raudabaugh. "Even now, he's still a scholar," Stern said. "He's constantly following what the trends are in labor rights. He's so fascinated in that area that he follows it with an intellectual curiosity." What has kept his interest in the area of labor, Raudabaugh said, is the notion that "the world of work impacts everybody." "Whether we be in what we think are sophisticated workplaces or more traditional working experiences, everybody has concerns and issues," he said. "How do you respect the tradeoff between the interests of those who perform the tasks, as opposed to the interests of those who took the risks and made the investment to create the workplace in the first place? -- It's just a very interesting social dynamic."

LOAD-DATE: June 23, 2009

The Bismarck Tribune, June 14, 2009, Sunday

Copyright 2009 The Bismarck Tribune, a division of Lee Enterprises
All Rights Reserved
The Bismarck Tribune

June 14, 2009, Sunday

HEADLINE: Showdown nears on Employee Free Choice Act

BYLINE: BRIAN DUGGAN Bismarck Tribune

BODY:
In 2007, Sens. Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad gave their support to a bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that sought to make it easier for unions to organize.

The bill died in the Senate when its supporters could not muster enough votes to end a Republican filibuster, send-ing labor interests back to the drawing board.

Two years later, things have changed - namely a larger Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democrat in the White House who has given his support to the legislation. Now, multi-million-dollar campaigns are being waged in Washington and around the country as an attempt to pass or defeat the legislation.

Support from North Dakota's delegation also has weakened, at least for the current version of the bill, which seeks to make unionizing easier for workers as well as forcing contract negotiating between workers and employers.

"Just as I believe no one should be forced to join a union, those who wish to organize should not be prevented from doing so," said Dorgan, D-N.D. "I've concluded there are problems with our current system, and we need to take some type of action to address them. The question now is what the final bill will look like."

Conrad, D-N.D., and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., have made similar statements.

The debate is playing heavily on television and radio commercials. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent across the country, including North Dakota, promoting or denouncing the legislation.

But the issue isn't necessarily on the minds of most Americans.

"It's one of these really important fights to a small, mobilized group of people," said Mark Jendrysik, a political science professor at the University of North Dakota. "But generally underneath the radar for the average American."

The minds that need winning, Jendrysik said, are members of Congress.

Hordes of chambers of commerce members from around the nation have come to Washington to lobby their dele-gations, including the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce that has spent $200,000 trying to defeat the legislation.

Labor groups also have spent millions promoting the bill as well as lobbying congressional members.

The scrutiny has led many in Congress to back off from explicitly backing the bill, including North Dakota's dele-gation.

"What public person elected to an office wants to stand up at this point in time and draw a line in the sand given that public abuse?" said Dave Kemnitz, president of the North Dakota AFL-CIO.

What would the bill do?

Primarily, three things:

* It would make it easier for workers to unionize by requiring a simple majority to sign authorizing cards - known as card check - to indicate they want to form a union. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers would still be able to use a federally monitored secret ballot if a third of them signed an authorization card indicating they want an election.

* It would require federal mediation if a contract is not agreed upon by workers and management after 90 days of a union organizing. After 120 days, if no agreement is reached, federal authorities would begin a legally binding arbitra-tion process.

* It would also impose penalties, up to $20,000, for employers illegally blocking workers from unionizing.

"It's a major change in the operations of unionization, probably the most significant change since the 1930s when you got the reluctant willingness of ownership to allow for unionization," said David Flynn, an economist at the Uni-versity of North Dakota where he directs the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. "It's not a small change."

Unionization rates have fallen among American workers in the last three decades from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 12.4 percent in 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Proponents say the legislation is a means to reverse that trend by ending what they say are unfair practices on be-half of employers that stymie the efforts of workers trying to organize.

"There's a lot of room for improvement in the system today," Kemnitz said. "I don't see how anyone can legiti-mately defend the documented coercive atmosphere that employers generate when employees seek to collectively bar-gain."

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has taken up the fight, running commercials around the country denouncing the so-called "card check" aspect of the bill, which chamber members say is undemocratic and could lead to coercive practices on behalf of unions.

MacIver, president of the North Dakota Chamber of Commerce, said that is his primary contention with the bill.

"I'm not opposed to unions," MacIver said. "That's the way this country is founded; you have that right. So why is it that someone wants to take that secret ballot away? It is un-American."

MacIver also notes that the National Labor Relations Board reported in 2007 that 93 percent of all initial union elections take place 54 days after a petition is filed to unionize.

Other provisions in the bill, some say, are more important to unionizing efforts than the so-called "card check." Af-ter all, they reason, what good is a union election without a bargained contract in the end?

In a June 3 Washington Post op-ed, Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, said the most important aspect of the Employee Free Choice Act are the new rules that would expedite contract negotiations between workers and employers, imposing federal mediation after 90 days and then arbitration after 120.

"Fifty-two percent of workers who form a union are still without a contract a year after they win an election, I found," Bronfenbrenner wrote, referring to her recent study, "No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Oppo-sition to Organizing." "And 37 percent remain without a contract two years after the election."

Bronfenbrenner's study used data from 1,004 NRLB certified union elections between 1999 and 2003.

But MacIver said the Employee Free Choice Act is more about unions trying to grow members in light of dwin-dling participation among American workers.

"Why would we in North Dakota want the government coming in here to tell us what to do?" MacIver said.

He jokes: "They've done a great job so far with the rest of the country."

Effect on North Dakota

For North Dakota, a state with a history of low union participation, it's still too early to tell what would happen if the bill were to pass, Flynn said.

The Peace Garden State has the 12th lowest union membership rate in the country at 6.1 percent of all salary and wage earners in 2008, down from 6.4 percent in 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Currently, the North Dakota AFL-CIO has about 100 local unions representing approximately 20,000 workers in North Dakota, according to its Web site.

With a booming economy in North Dakota, "gains have been significant on a per capita basis," Flynn said. "It's tough to see the union situation being significantly valuable to the labor force in North Dakota. We still are growing."

In comparison, North Carolina has the least union members in the country at 3.5 percent, followed by Georgia and South Carolina. New York, on the other hand, had the nation's highest union membership rate at 24.9 percent, just ahead of Hawaii and Alaska.

There are factors in the North Dakota workforce that could suggest employees could become more inclined to un-ionize as a means to increase their wages, Flynn said.

"There's a bit of an underemployment situation in North Dakota, people who are working more than one job to make what is considered a full time salary," Flynn said.

North Dakota does have the sixth highest rate in the nation of workers with multiple jobs at 8.7 percent of the workforce, a trait found in most Midwestern states.

However, analysts with Job Service North Dakota also note that because of the state's growing economy, given its low population, more work is available for those who want it.

Still, Flynn said, if workers in North Dakota feel they could get a better deal by unionizing, perhaps the Employee Free Choice Act could invite more to do just that.

"A year or two down the road, is there a possibility that these things might start to bite and have an impact on the bottom line for business? Sure," Flynn said.

Political support

Opinion polls conducted nationally have shown little knowledge among the public about the bill.

In a Gallup poll released in March, which is when the legislation was introduced in this Congress, 53 percent of Americans said they would support a bill that "would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers." The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

"In this context, with the arguments against card check yet to be fully aired and debated, it could be a troubling sign for unions that no more than 53 percent of Americans immediately support this fundamental aspect of the card-check bill," wrote Lydia Saad, a Gallup analyst.

A majority of Democrats and Independents, 70 percent and 53 percent respectively, supported the notion of easier union organizing, while 60 percent of Republicans opposed it.

However, 65 percent of those polled told Gallup they were not closely following the debate over the legislation. The 12 percent that said they were following the bill very closely were more likely to oppose it.

Meanwhile, an April NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found that 45 percent of Americans opposed a bill that, "would allow workers at a company to join a labor union if a majority of workers at that company sign a petition saying they want to form a union, rather than by requiring the vote take place in a federally supervised secret ballot election as they do now."

Those in favor totaled 42 percent with 13 percent undecided. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

N.D.'s delegation

All three North Dakota lawmakers in Congress supported a similar bill in 2007, with both Conrad and Dorgan co-sponsoring the legislation. That bill was ultimately defeated in the Senate.

But now, with Democrats nearing a 60-member majority, the Employee Free Choice Act could pass this year de-spite support growing tepid among many previous supporters, including Dorgan, Conrad and Pomeroy.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said recently that she could no longer support the legislation, delivering a major blow to the prospects of the bill ultimately passing. Currently, the entire GOP caucus is likely to oppose the bill.

And while Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who defected from the Republican Party this year, has given some signals that he could be warming to an aye vote, the senator's vote is anything but certain, despite supporting it in 2007.

And to make matters more complicated, Minnesota has yet to send its second senator to Washington, which many observers speculate is likely to be the Democratic challenger, Al Franken. Without Franken, Democrats are still one vote shy (counting one reliable Independent vote) of the magic 60 needed to end any potential filibuster.

While the Employee Free Choice Act has riled up the business and labor interests in Washington and around the country, a much larger fight over health care reform looms on the horizon.

"It's going to be brutal," Jendrysik said. "It's going to make this fight over card check look like a walk in the park."

The Employee Free Choice Act is still in committee, awaiting the go ahead by congressional leadership to push it to a floor vote.

When that might be is anybody's guess, Jendrysik said.

(Reach reporter Brian Duggan at 223-8482 or brian.duggan@bismarcktribune.com.)

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 2009

Fort Wayne Journal, June 9, 2009, Tuesday

Fort Wayne Journal

June 9, 2009, Tuesday

Fort Wayne Journal

1 million-plus jobs turn on quick deals

Marty SchladenThe Journal Gazette

More than 1 million U.S. jobs – and more than 100,000 in Indiana – are riding on whether the bankruptcies of Chrysler LLC and General Motors Corp. are quick and orderly, according to a prominent research center’s study.

But if Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock is successful in stopping the proposed sale of Chrysler – in which state bondholders would take a $6 million loss – it could drag out that bankruptcy and convince some GM bondholders to do likewise, experts said.

However, they said, the challenge to the deal is likely to fail.

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied Mourdock’s request to stop the sale of Chrysler’s good assets to a new company led by Fiat SpA. The U.S. Supreme Court must now decide whether it will hear the case; it said Monday that it needs more time to review the matter.

The jobs study, by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., says that almost 250,000 U.S. jobs will be lost by 2011 if the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies go smoothly. It said Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, respectively, will be hardest hit, with 85,000 losses.

But if the bankruptcies are protracted, consumers will desert the carmakers, creating massive disruptions in the supply chain and huge job losses, the study said.

In Indiana, 13,000 jobs would be lost by 2011 under the best-case scenario. But if the bankruptcies become open-ended, 124,000 Hoosier jobs could be lost, the study said.

In its best-case scenario, the study assumes that both carmakers emerge from bankruptcy within 90 days. The restructured companies would never stop producing cars and trucks – and they would keep paying parts makers.

The study used government and industry data and a computer modeling service run by Regional Economic Models Inc., of Amherst, Mass.

Its estimates of job losses include losses at the carmakers and their suppliers as well as indirect job losses caused because people will have less money to spend at restaurants, stores and the like.

In the worst case, the bankruptcies would drag on indefinitely, possibly lasting a year or more. In that scenario, the automakers’ sales would plummet by 90 percent, the study assumed.

The disruption would force so many parts makers out of business that Ford Motor Co. and foreign-owned companies would see a 50 percent loss of U.S. production through the last half of 2009.

GM, which employs 2,600 at its Allen County assembly plant and 1,300 at its Defiance, Ohio, foundry, won’t vouch for the exact numbers in the Center for Automotive Research study. But the carmaker agrees with its overall conclusion, said Tom Wilkinson, GM’s director of news relations.

"We’re basically saying to consumers that we’re going to emerge soon as a new company," Wilkinson said Monday. "If the headlines are full of the fact that we’re closing our factories and turning off the lights, consumers will go away and not come back."

Typical corporate bankruptcies often take more than a year, said Dennis Long, a bankruptcy expert who teaches at the Indiana University law school. In those cases, a company stays in Chapter 11 while it restructures debt under a bankruptcy judge’s supervision.

"This is exactly the opposite," Long said of Chrysler and GM.

Those two carmakers are selling their most valuable assets to new entities that won’t be part of the bankruptcy. What’s left will remain part of the bankruptcy case until it can be sold or otherwise disposed of, Long said.

The majority owner of the new Chrysler will be the United Auto Workers. The U.S. and Canadian governments will own most of the new GM. The governments and the union say they’ll sell their stakes as quickly as they can.

Indiana’s battle
A bankruptcy judge in New York last week approved the sale of Chrysler’s most valuable assets to a new company led by Italian carmaker Fiat SpA.

But Mourdock, the Indiana treasurer, objects to a decision by Bankruptcy Judge Arthur Gonzalez to pay the owners of $6.9 billion of Chrysler bonds 29 cents on the dollar.

The owners of 92 percent of the bonds agreed to the deal, and Gonzalez wrote that they would get far less if the deal isn’t completed and Chrysler is sold off piecemeal.

Last July, as gas prices spiked and Chrysler’s credit rating fell, Indiana funds bought $42.5 million worth of Chrysler bonds for 43 cents on the dollar, or $18.3 million. Under Gonzalez’ ruling, Indiana would get $12.3 million, a loss of $6 million.

Mourdock’s office said Monday that it didn’t know how much it cost to hire New York law firm White & Case LLP to represent Indiana in the Chrysler bankruptcy. But the treasurer’s office said legal bills would be capped at $2 million.

Mourdock didn’t respond to interview requests, but in a statement last month, he said he feared the precedent that would be set if secured bondholders got less in the bankruptcy than unsecured creditors.

"The court filing is aimed not only at recouping those losses but also reasserting the rule of law and preventing the federal government from pursuing policies that strike at the heart of the capital system," he said.

Fiat has the option of pulling out of its deal with Chrysler if the courts don’t approve formation of the new company by Monday.

If the Chrysler sale is delayed past that point, something similar could happen with some of GM’s bondholders, said Long, the bankruptcy expert.

"Anybody who’s not satisfied about what they’re getting out of the GM sales order can do exactly what the Indiana pensioners have done," Long said.

He said, however, that although Mourdock makes some good legal arguments, it’s unlikely he’ll win in court.

Appellate courts are hesitant to overturn trial courts unless they believe the trial court misinterpreted the law. In the Chrysler case, the dispute is over whether bondholders would get more from the settlement Gonzalez approved or from a more traditional bankruptcy proceeding, Long said.

Art Wheaton, an automotive expert with Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School in Buffalo, N.Y., agreed with that analysis.

"I think the folks from Indiana are doing this in good faith," he said. "I just don’t think they’re going to prevail."

But if anything happens to draw out the Chrysler or GM bankruptcies, that could create the "ugly" scenario that the Center for Automotive Research warned of, Wheaton said.

Tom Kelley, president of Fort Wayne-based Kelley Automotive Group, also thinks it’s unlikely the courts will stop a merger of Chrysler and Fiat. But he thinks that if the GM or Chrysler bankruptcy stretches out, the results won’t be as dire as the Center for Automotive Research warned.

"I think that’s unreasonable," he said of the carmakers losing 90 percent of their sales.

mschladen@jg.net

Business Wire, June 10, 2009, Wednesday

Copyright 2009 Business Wire, Inc.
Business Wire

June 10, 2009, Wednesday

HEADLINE: Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management to Add Four Senior Hires

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:

Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management (PWM) today announced the addition of four new hires to the firm's US Private Wealth Management group. The additions include four Managing Directors, Joanne Jensen, Pat Janco, Becky Creavin and Jennifer Shaw, who will be located in Deutsche Bank's Park Avenue office in New York. All four will report to Chip Packard, Head, U.S. Private Bank - Eastern Region.

Since 2004, Jensen has been featured annually as one of Worth Magazine's "Top 100 Financial Advisors" and in 2008 she was named to Barron's ranking of "Top 100 Women Financial Advisors". She currently is a Managing Direc-tor at The Citi Private Bank and has previously held senior positions in Citigroup's Global Markets and Wealth Man-agement businesses. Jensen earned an MBA in Finance from New York University's Stern School of Business and a BA in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.

Janco is a Senior Private Banker with more than 20 years of wealth management experience, most recently as a Managing Director with The Citi Private Bank in Long Island. She previously worked as a Private Banker at Chase and Fleet Bank. Janco earned a BA in Marketing and IT Applications from Fairfield University.

Creavin has significant institutional and wealth management experience and has spent the last 10 years at The Citi Private Bank as a Senior Private Banker and Director. She began her career twenty years ago at Bankers Trust. Creavin earned an MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business, a BS in Economics and Computer Science from Duke University and is a Certified Financial Planner.

Shaw is a Senior Private Banker and Director in the Manhattan office of The Citi Private Bank where she has worked for 10 years. She began her career at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, where she worked in the private client and high yield bond trading groups. Shaw earned an Executive MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business, and a BS with honors from Northeastern University.

"These individuals are important franchise hires for our US Private Wealth Management business," said Thomas Bowers, Head of US Private Wealth Management. "They are among the most seasoned and effective Private Bankers in the marketplace and will bring tremendous experience and leadership to our platform. Their appointments will demon-strate Deutsche Bank's continuing commitment to the strategic growth of our US wealth management franchise, where we expect further significant growth in the coming years."

About Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank is a leading global investment bank with a strong and profitable private clients fran-chise. A leader in Germany and Europe, the bank is continuously growing in North America, Asia and key emerging markets. With 80,277 employees in 72 countries, Deutsche Bank competes to be the leading global provider of financial solutions for demanding clients creating exceptional value for its shareholders and people.

Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management

Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management has been serving the interests of wealthy individuals, families and se-lect institutions for more than a century. With offices across the U.S., Deutsche Bank's Private Wealth Management business division provides a variety of customized solutions to private clients worldwide including traditional and al-ternative investments, risk management strategies, lending, trust and estate services, wealth transfer planning, family office services, custody and family and philanthropy advisory. Private Wealth Management includes the U.S. Private Bank and Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the private client services division of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., the in-vestment banking and securities arm of Deutsche Bank AG in the United States and a member of NYSE, FINRA and SIPC.
www.db.com

Raleigh News & Observer, June 10, 2009, Wednesday

Raleigh News & Observer

June 10, 2009, Wednesday

Raleigh News & Observer

Turnover in BofA's top ranks raises questions
Exodus of dozens of top execs since 2005 raises concerns about bank's ability to navigate crisis.

BY RICK ROTHACKER - THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

CHARLOTTE -- In the past four years, Bank of America has lost key banking talent from the companies it has s acquired, adding to turnover in the bank.

Former Merrill Lynch executives who have departed include former chief executive John Thain, president Greg Fleming, wealth management head Bob McCann and a host of top investment bankers.

When Bank of America agreed to buy wealth manager U.S. Trust, CEO Peter Scaturro was originally supposed to stay, but he changed his mind and decided to leave before the deal closed in July of 2007. He didn't get along with Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, then leading wealth management, and chafed at the bank's instructions to stick to scripts at town hall meetings, people familiar with the matter said.

Most of Scaturro's top management team has left Bank of America, including his successor, Frances Aldrich Sevilla-Sacasa. A ranking of brand prestige this year by the Luxury Institute found U.S. Trust had fallen to No. 22 out of 35, down from No. 3 in 2006.

Bank of America has experienced significant turnover in its top ranks in recent years, raising questions about the Charlotte bank's leadership stability amid a government review of its management and board.

The latest departure came last week when the bank said chief risk officer Amy Brinkley was giving up her post as chief executive Ken Lewis looks for a "different approach" to risk management.

Brinkley, when she leaves this summer, will be among 52 of the 100 top executives at the bank in 2005 who are no longer with the company, a document reviewed by the Observer shows.

The exodus raises concerns about management's ability to lead the nation's biggest bank through the current crisis and into a more traditional banking model under tighter government scrutiny. The bank has also failed to keep a number of high-profile executives from companies it has acquired.

The executives left for multiple reasons, including jobs at other financial institutions, Merrill Lynch-related layoffs, retirements and ousters under CEO Lewis. Regulators may also be directing changes in leadership. Like other big banks, regulators have asked Bank of America to evaluate whether its board and managers have "sufficient expertise and ability" to handle current economic conditions.

Perhaps the biggest concern about the bank's talent development process is the lack of a clear-cut successor for Lewis, who at 62 isn't expected to stay more than three years. Many observers doubt the bank has a viable internal candidate.

Federal Reserve officials have reportedly told the bank to work on CEO succession and its management bench. The bank says the board is assessing its succession plan as part of Chairman Walter Massey's review of the bank's corporate governance.

Many companies begin to worry if they lose 5 percent of their top executives per year, said Bradford Bell, an associate professor at Cornell University specializing in human resources issues. Other experts said annual turnover around 10 percent would be considered at the high end. Bank of America's turnover of top executives equates to 13 percent per year.

"For top talent, that is quite large," Bell said. "Companies devote a lot of resources to keeping these people happy and keeping them in the company."

Others, however, said the bank's turnover is likely in line with other banks that are losing executives in the financial crisis, especially as the government reins in compensation and the banking industry loses prestige.

"The level of leadership turnover we've experienced is consistent with the history of the organization and a consolidating industry," said Bank of America spokesman Scott Silvestri.

Any leadership changes over the four years included "retirements, career changes, relocations and voluntary and involuntary departures," but he declined to comment on the specific numbers.

Silvestri noted that during the four years, the bank's size, types of businesses and markets where it operates have changed. The bank has nearly doubled its assets with five major acquisitions in that time.

To be sure, losing executives can be a sign that the bank has talent that other institutions covet or that it's shedding leaders who aren't up to the task. The bank's board has expressed strong support for Lewis and his team, Silvestri said.

But a half dozen former Bank of America executives said the turnover was a sign of the low morale inside the bank under Lewis. They said the bank's ability to bring in new talent and develop current executives is a major concern. "You can't keep draining a bank of that size and complexity without replacing it," said a former bank executive, who did not want his name used so he could speak more frankly.

The list of the top 100 viewed by the Observer was part of a presentation made to the bank's board in 2005. Some key positions that have seen high turnover are chief financial officer and treasurer. Since June 2005, the bank has had three CFOs and three treasurers.

The exit of Brinkley, the risk chief, wasn't a surprise because the bank has suffered rising problem loans in the past year and stunned shareholders with bigger-than-expected fourth-quarter losses at Merrill Lynch, which the bank acquired Jan. 1.

The bank's decision to replace Brinkley with strategy executive Greg Curl, however, raised questions about why the bank didn't have a more experienced risk executive to put in her place. Sam Ramsey, a Bank of America veteran who joined GMAC Financial Services in 2007, had once been deemed a potential successor for Brinkley, a source familiar with the matter said.

Perhaps the most notable departure is that of former CFO Al de Molina, who was seen as a possible CEO successor before his surprise resignation in December 2006. De Molina is now chief executive at GMAC, where 8 of his top 17 lieutenants previously worked at Bank of America. De Molina was known for his willingness to share contrary views and push back against Lewis, people familiar with the matter said.

Another potentially key departure was general counsel Tim Mayopoulos, who was replaced Dec. 10 by Bank of America executive Brian Moynihan amid Merrill-related layoffs. Mayopoulos, now general counsel at mortgage giant Fannie Mae, was not on hand to advise the bank as it attempted to back out of the Merrill deal later that month.

In the end, the bank proceeded with the merger under government pressure. But it has faced regulatory and congressional probes, including a hearing set for Thursday, for its failure to disclose problems with the Merrill deal until mid-January. Moynihan now runs Bank of America's global banking and wealth management unit, replacing former Merrill CEO John Thain.

"It's been very apparent there's been incredible drain there from primarily the finance and strategy areas of the company," said a financial services industry recruiter, noting the departure of de Molina and the retirement of a previous CFO, Jim Hance. "It certainly plays a factor in the challenges they're facing. There's been no internal counterweight (to Lewis)."

Another departure noticed in the bank this year was James Jackson, one of the higher-ranking African American executives at the company, who joined Bank of America alumnus Lynn Pike at Capital One Financial Corp. on May 1. Pike now runs Capital One's banking unit and Jackson is in charge of its branches. Both were among the bank's top 100 executives in 2005.

Ultimately, the responsibility of keeping top talent falls on the CEO, top managers and the board, said Bell, the Cornell professor. Companies such as General Electric, American Express and Shell are known for rigorous talent management programs in which top executives, including the CEO, play a role, he said. At Bank of America, "maybe they're not getting the care and feeding they need," he said.

Lewis, whose longtime personnel chief is Steele Alphin, made the infusion of new talent a major focus when he started as CEO in 2001, hiring executives from General Electric and Honeywell International to help the company improve customer service and internal processes. But many of those executives, including at least three in the 2005 top 100, have departed.

Courier News, June 8, 2009, Monday

Copyright 2009 Courier News (Bridgewater, NJ)
All Rights Reserved
Courier News (Bridgewater, New Jersey)

June 8, 2009, Monday

HEADLINE: Somerville schools superintendent Carolyn Leary announces retirement

BYLINE: MARTIN C. BRICKETTO

BODY:
STAFF WRITER
Superintendent Carolyn F. Leary has announced her retirement after nearly two decades as the district's chief administrator.

Leary's retirement is effective June 30, 2010, when her most recent contract expires. She will have been with the district for 18 years and 10 months at that time.

"I have been blessed to spend these years in Somerville and when my last day arrives as superintendent of schools, I will leave with a heavy heart and many happy memories," Leary said in a prepared statement that she read during a school board meeting Tuesday.
Leary began her statement by quipping that the only time she writes anything down is when she is asked to give a eulogy.

"Perhaps that is fitting for tonight," Leary said.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL

A former superintendent in New Paltz, NY, Leary was hired in 1991, succeeding James Dwyer after 18 years as the district's superintendent. Her current base salary is $201,594, according to budget documents posted on the district's Web site. The district serves borough students, and high school students from Branchburg. It had a total enrollment of 2,260 students as of the 2007-2008 school year, according to data from the state Department of Education.

The contents of the announcement may not have come as a surprise to board members. Leary said in her statement that she mentioned to board member Ken Cornell two years ago that "I felt it was time for me to move on to something else in my life," and last year, she told the board she would be retiring at the end of her contract, "giving them ample time to plan for the future."
Board President Peter Lawton said Wednesday the panel had an idea Leary would be retiring, but until Tuesday's announcement it "certainly wasn't official and it certainly wasn't definite." He said the board accepted Leary's resignation.

"In the time that I've been working with her, she has done an incredibly good job," said Lawton, a nine-year board member. "She has taken a difficult situation because of various things beyond her control and made the best out of them. And when I say beyond her control, I mean state mandates that didn't have funding and trying to find the best resolution to some of the Branchburg issues regarding the high school. We have a very diverse community, and she has done a lot of good things for the school district."

At times, the Branchburg and Somerville districts have argued over representation on the
Somerville board and the cost of tuition.

EDUCATION AND NURTURING

Leary thanked residents for passing seven consecutive budgets and approving multimillion-dollar referendums during her time at the district for purposes such as upgrading the middle school. She went on to thank her administrative team, teachers and other personnel and school board members. She said she has worked with 35 school board members during her tenure.
"These (board of education) members never placed self-interests, personal agendas or engaged in micromanaging, but rather saw the bigger picture, which was a quality education for all children no matter how rich or poor they were," Leary said.

Leary also thanked Somerville mayors and borough council members, Branchburg school board members and Somerville and Branchburg parents for "entrusting your children to our care for their education and nurturing unrivaled by others."

A former nun, Leary earned a bachelor's degree in English from Mercy College and a master's degree in educational administration and a doctorate in education from Fordham University, according to past Courier News articles. She also earned a master's degree in industrial and labor relations, with a specialty in collective bargaining, from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

Leary became superintendent in New Paltz in 1988 after more than two years as superintendent of a K-8 district in Garrison, NY. She also spent time as an elementary school principal and middle school teacher.

Lawton said finding a new superintendent is likely a six-to-nine-month process once the tools for conducting the search are in place. He said the board's first step is finding out what kind of search firms are available to help with the process, with a request for proposals to follow.
Lawton added that the board wants to find someone who's a good fit with the district, and doesn't want to settle for just any candidate.

"We would be prepared to do whatever we have to do to continue to search, even if that means an interim superintendent," Lawton said. "This isn't on-the-job training. We want someone we feel is comfortable and qualified to deal with the Somerville school district."
Martin C. Bricketto: 908-243-6609; mbricketto@MyCentralJersey.com

LOAD-DATE: June 10, 2009

U.S. News, June 5, 2009, Friday

U.S. News & World Report

June 5, 2009, Friday

U.S. News & World Report

Do Good Teachers Leave When Black Students Enroll?

By Zach Miners

A recently released study that looks at the effects of an influx of African-American students into various schools within an urban North Carolina school district is raising some interesting questions about patterns of teacher movement.

The study by C. Kirabo Jackson, an associate professor of labor economics at Cornell University, shows that the highest quality teachers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district left their schools after a long-running busing policy to promote integration was ended. Jackson's study, published in the Journal of Labor Economics, tracked the changes that occurred before and after the busing policy ended between 2002 and 2003. Because the racial makeup of the schools changed suddenly but the neighborhood and economic factors overall stayed the same, the research was able to focus directly on the impact the student body itself had on teacher quality.

"This is particularly sobering because it implies that, all else equal, black students will systematically receive lower-quality instruction," says Jackson. "This relationship may be a substantial contributor to the black-white achievement gap in American schools."

Using data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center, Jackson found that schools that had an increase in black enrollment saw a decrease in their share of high-quality teachers, as measured by years of experience and certification test scores. Teacher effectiveness, as measured by teachers' ability to improve student test scores, also went down in the schools with an inflow of black students. The change in teacher quality generally occurred when the busing program ended, indicating that teachers moved in anticipation of more black students.

It is unclear whether the teacher-movement patterns in the 137,000-student Charlotte-Mecklenburg district would be typical of other large, urban school systems. A growing body of research does show that schools in low-income areas with high concentrations of minority students tend to have teachers who are considered, on average, to be of a lower quality than those in more affluent areas. And plenty of studies document how common it is for teachers to move from shaky, high-needs schools to better-performing suburban schools.

But it is almost impossible to pin down the reasons why some teachers stay away from, or leave, struggling schools. Is it out of convenience to be closer to their own suburban homes? Better pay? A desire to teach students from a particular background or of a particular ethnicity? In an interview with Education Week, Jackson says his study might offer a handle on those questions.

"An important implication of these findings is that policymakers should be cautious when advocating policies such as vouchers, school choice, district consolidation, or school busing that require the reshuffling of students across schools," the study concludes, because shifts in student population might lead to shifts in teacher quality.

The Washington Post, June 3, 2009, Wednesday

The Washington Post

June 3, 2009, Wednesday

The Washington Post

A War Against Organizing

By Kate Bronfenbrenner

Angel Warner, an employee at a Rite Aid distribution center, sat next to me recently in a congressional briefing room and described what happened when she and her fellow workers tried to form a union in their California workplace. She talked about the surveillance, constant threats and harassment they endured; how she and other workers were repeatedly taken aside and interrogated, one on one, about how they planned to vote; how two co-workers were fired; and how the rest lived in fear that any day they, too, might get a pink slip. The union filed numerous charges of unfair labor practices and eventually won the organizing election. But three years after the campaign began, Warner and her fellow Rite Aid workers still don't have a contract.

Like most U.S. companies, Rite Aid takes full advantage of current labor law to try to keep workers from exercising their full rights to organize and collectively bargain under the National Labor Relations Act. Far from an aberration, such behavior by U.S. companies during union organizing campaigns has become routine, and our nation's labor laws neither protect workers' rights nor provide disincentives for employers to stop disregarding those rights.

Late last month I published a study, "No Holds Barred," that was presented at the hearing at which Angel spoke. I looked at a random sample of more than 1,000 union elections over a five-year period to determine the parameters of employer behavior during union representation elections in the private sector and the limitations of the labor law system established to regulate that behavior.

In 34 percent of the elections I studied, companies fired employees for union activity. In 57 percent of elections, employers threatened to shut down all or part of their facilities, and in 47 percent, employers threatened to cut wages and benefits.

In 63 percent of campaigns, supervisors met with workers one on one and interrogated them about their union activity or whether they or others were supporting the union. In 54 percent of the elections, supervisors used these one-on-ones to threaten individual workers.

The bottom line is that there has been a steady decline of workers' rights in the past several decades. Colleagues and I have examined this issue in a series of studies over the past two decades. My new data show that employers are more than twice as likely as they were in the 1990s to use 10 or more tactics -- including threats and firings -- to thwart workers' organizing efforts, and they are more likely to use more punitive and aggressive tactics such as interrogations, discharges and threats of plant closings, while shifting away from softer tactics such as social events, promises of improvement and employee involvement programs.

For the vast majority of workers who want to join unions today, the right to organize and bargain collectively -- free from coercion, intimidation and retaliation -- is at best a promise indefinitely deferred. In election campaigns overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, it is now standard practice for companies to subject workers to threats, interrogation, harassment, surveillance and retaliation for union activity.

The failure of the system to defend workers' rights in a timely manner multiplies the obstacles workers face when seeking union representation, creating delays that favor employers. Employers appeal a high percentage of the cases to the NLRB, and in the most egregious instances, the employer can count on a final decision being held up by three to five years.

A key aspect of proposed labor law reform, the Employee Free Choice Act, concerns revisions to the rules surrounding arbitration of the first contract. My findings show that this provision may be among the most crucial of the legislation. Fifty-two percent of workers who form a union are still without a contract a year after they win an election, I found, and 37 percent remain without a contract two years after the election. For employers, labor law provides yet another means to indefinitely delay unionization.

It doesn't have to be this way. My survey data from the public sector portray an atmosphere in which workers may organize free from the kind of coercion, intimidation and retaliation that so taints the election process in the private sector. Most of the states in the public-sector sample have laws allowing workers to choose a union through card check or voluntary recognition. And more than a third of public-sector workers in the United States are members of unions.

Unless Congress passes serious labor law reform with real penalties, only a small fraction of the workers who seek union representation will succeed. If recent trends continue, there will no longer be a functioning legal mechanism to effectively protect the right of private-sector workers to organize and collectively bargain. Our country cannot afford to make workers defer their rights and aspirations for union representation any longer.

The writer is director of labor education research at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her paper "No Holds Barred -- The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing" was published last month by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute.

USA Today, June 3, 2009, Wednesday

USA Today

June 3, 2009, Wednesday

USA Today

Obama plans to reach out to Muslim world

CAIRO — Muhammad Farag isn't planning to take time away from his studies to tune in when President Obama speaks at his university here Thursday.

"It's not like the world will change after he ends his speech, will it?" says Farag, 27, an engineering student. He sums up his feelings about Obama's historic visit with one word: "So?"

Across town, merchants in the narrow, dusty passageways of the 14th-century Khan al-Khalili bazaar are only vaguely aware of Obama's visit to Egypt. But their faces brighten at the mention of his name. "Mr. Obama is welcome anytime in Cairo," says Hassam Yosef, 25. "You have a friend in the Muslim man."

Obama touches down here in this ancient heart of the Arab world Thursday on a critical mission: to try to repair the United States' relations with Muslims after a decade of violence and recrimination, and to reinforce voices of moderation in a long-volatile region.

The setting of his speech — the capital of a country that calls itself a democracy but is run as a police state — speaks to the complexities before him. In many Muslim nations, from Lebanon to Afghanistan, where Obama's words also will be heard, extremists are gaining ground.

Obama promised a new approach to the Muslim world during his campaign. He said he would address Muslims from a major Muslim capital early in his presidency to try to soften hearts and minds hardened by the U.S. response to 9/11, its close ties to Israel, the war in Iraq, its treatment of terrorism suspects and more.

"The president will be addressing a group of people who not only feel that U.S. government policy has wronged them, but that they've unfairly been its targets," says Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

The speech will be at 6:10 a.m. ET. The White House says the president plans to remind Muslims of his personal connection to them: His late father was a Muslim from Kenya, and the president spent some of his childhood living in Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population — more than 206 million.

Grand Sheik Mohammad Sayed Tantawi of Al-Azhar University and mosque, one of the world's top Muslim leaders, says he appreciates that Obama "rejects the idiot racism … that any normal person would reject."

Obama's speech may be most closely watched, though, for how he addresses some of the intractable foreign policy challenges he faces, from Iran's nuclear ambitions and the prospects for a Palestinian state to the military buildup in Afghanistan and troop drawdown in Iraq.

Aides say Obama will make the case that better relations with the Islamic world will contribute to peace, prosperity and security for all nations. "He doesn't hesitate to take on tough issues," says deputy national security adviser Mark Lippert.

As more U.S. troops move into Afghanistan and elections are held in Lebanon and elsewhere that could give Islamist groups more power in the region, "it's an important time," says national security spokesman Denis McDonough. "The president believes it's an important opportunity to advance the national interest."

Americans seem to agree. In a Gallup Poll taken on the eve of Obama's trip, 76% said the quality of the relationship between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.

Ali Hadi, vice provost of the American University in Cairo, says people in Egypt and across the Islamic world want a better relationship with the United States. After the 9/11 attacks, "the entire world, including the Arab and Muslim worlds, was very sympathetic," Hadi says. "Unfortunately, the U.S. did not capitalize on that to lead the world in a better direction. This is a chance for the United States to redirect."

New Gallup polls from 11 Arab countries show dramatic improvement in approval ratings for the U.S. government's leadership in eight of the countries since Obama took office. The approval ratings, however, are still well below 50%. Egypt's approval rating of U.S. leadership was just 6% in May 2008; it's now up to 25%.

There's a weariness and some cynicism among the young here.

Farag says President George W. Bush publicly promoted democracy in Egypt and peace in the region, as did Bill Clinton and other U.S. presidents. But because of Egypt's long role as a peacemaker and U.S. ally, democratic nations have looked the other way while President Hosni Mubarak has ruled under emergency law for 28 years, imprisoning thousands of dissidents, political opponents and anyone else he wishes at will.

"After a while," Farag says, "you know exactly what's going to be happening."

Obama will make a concerted effort to reach out to Muslim youth when he speaks at Cairo University, McDonough says. Hundreds of students have been given tickets to attend.

Rania Al Malky, 37, editor of the Daily News Egypt, says she believes most young people are open to Obama's message. "People are definitely still a little skeptical but not extremely skeptical," she says. "People feel he is familiar to them. They see him in a very different light from any previous president."

The human rights issues in Egypt, she says, need to be addressed — and the White House says Obama will do that. But Al Malky says Obama should tread carefully there because "no one wants the U.S. to try to impose democracy."

Obama is getting no shortage of advice about what to say in an address that's scheduled to last less than an hour.

Human rights in Egypt

Like presidents before him, Obama is taking heat from some human rights groups, such as the Alliance for Egyptian Americans, that fear he will paper over Egypt's abuses in the name of maintaining relations with a strategic ally and longtime peacemaker in the Arab world.

After a recent meeting with Egyptian pro-democracy activists, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the issue would come up during Obama's trip, but said it wouldn't be a dominant theme.

"We always raise democracy and human rights," she said. "And I think that there is a great awareness on the part of the Egyptian government that with young people like this and with enhanced communications, it is in Egypt's interest to move more toward democracy and to exhibit more respect for human rights."

Some say it's a mistake not to push harder. "It's great that Obama's going there to give a speech, but it's going to send mixed messages. It's going to give validation to a repressive regime," says Aladdin Elaasar of the Alliance of Egyptian Americans. "It is a brutal regime, and people are living in subhuman conditions."

In Cairo, however, people don't necessarily expect — or even want — much from Obama when it comes to human rights issues.

If he pushes for change and it happens, that would be great, Farag says. "If, over the next year, we start to see more democratic reforms, ending marshal law, that would be a positive thing," he says. But "there's a lot that we should be doing, not him. The solving of our democracy issues is our problem to deal with."

Alterman, who heads CSIS' Middle East Program, says efforts to push democracy simply don't play well in the Mideast.

"In the last administration, we heard a lot about democracy and liberty and freedom," Alterman says. "These are ideas that come out of our own enlightenment, history and tradition, and I hold these ideals dear. But if I'm honest, I have to concede that they don't really resonate among Muslim audiences; justice does."

The influence of extremists

Although it is officially banned, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood has been making gains in parliamentary elections in Egypt, and its members now hold 88 of 454 seats. The organization, which seeks to impose an Islamic state, publicly renounces violence and is pushing for democratic reforms so its members can gain more seats through open elections.

During an interview in his office in which his cellphone rang incessantly, Muslim Brotherhood Deputy Chairman Mohamed Habib emphasized that "we don't like violence" and favor "the peaceful changing of authority."

He said he's optimistic Obama can bring change on behalf of the Palestinians but expressed concern that Democrats in the U.S., particularly Clinton, are "more on the side of the Zionists."

Former United Nations secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, now living in Cairo and serving as the chairman of the National Council for Human Rights, says the Brotherhood "represents extremists" and is funded by extremist groups from outside Egypt.

Elaasar called the rise of the Brotherhood and similar groups "a danger that the West is not paying attention to." The Brotherhood, he says, "has a very fundamentalist agenda. It would turn Egypt into a theocracy."

The White House is watching parliamentary elections in Lebanon that could see Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., win in a victory that could boost influence for Iran and Syria.

Officials haven't said whether Obama will address the June 7 elections in his speech. Clinton and Vice President Biden have visited the country, sparking accusations of interference from Hezbollah.

Justice for Palestinians

Obama is not likely to offer a point-by-point Arab-Israeli peace plan, but Muslims expect strong pro-Palestinian statements from him. Analysts say if he wants to earn credibility with the Muslim people, he'll have to offer something concrete beyond recent demands that Israel halt West Bank settlements.

Sheik Tantawi will not discuss the Muslim Brotherhood, human rights issues or the elections in Lebanon, but has plenty to say when it comes to the peace process. Obama should use "the power and the weight" of his office to "give the Palestinians their rights," he says.

It's a common theme here.

Ahmed Gheina, a tour guide at the Egyptian Textile Museum on the edge of the bazaar, calls Obama a "good man" for wanting to bring change to U.S.-Muslim relations. But he wants to hear some specifics on the peace process. "We want him to stay with the Palestinian people. We want him to change (the U.S. relationship with) the Israelis," he says.

Analysts say that after addressing the U.S.-Muslim relationship in a post-inauguration interview with an Arab TV network and in an April speech in Turkey, Obama must offer specifics this time.

"He can only give the 'America loves and respects the Muslim world' speech so many times," says former Mideast peace negotiator Aaron David Miller. "In my view, Cairo should be about dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue, but it has to be backed up by a strategy. …You can only get by being Barack Hussein Obama for so long. "

In an interview with National Public Radio this week, Obama said achieving peace in the Middle East "is not going to be an easy path."

He did not say whether he will offer an expanded policy prescription in Cairo. He said he will be tough on both sides as the process moves forward.

"It is important for us to be clear about what we believe will lead to peace and that there's not equivocation and there's not a sense that we expect only compromise on one side," he told NPR. "When it comes to the concrete, then the politics of it get difficult, both within the Israeli and the Palestinian communities. But, look, if this was easy, it would've already been done."

Changing hearts at home

"Any American president's principle audience is domestic," says Lisa Anderson, provost of the American University in Cairo.

Obama's outline of why the Arab-Muslim world matters to the United States "is all supposed to echo back home," she says.

Obama has some work to do in reshaping opinions about Muslims in the United States, as well. A new Gallup poll finds that only 21% have a favorable opinion of Muslim countries.

Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian whose grandfather served as prime minister, says too many people think of Muslims as extremists. "This is our main problem," he says. "How to explain that they represent only 2-to-3% of Muslims?"

Atef Fahmey, 29, who sells brightly colored cotton scarves and dresses from a small stall in the middle of the city's mazelike bazaar, says he has a simple hope for Obama's speech. He says he hopes Obama tells the world that "Islam is a good religion, not bad like some people say in America."

Contributing: Theodore May