Tracy Davidson

USA TODAY-
U.S. airlines workers, who have gone through pay and benefit cuts, layoffs, bankruptcies and rising workloads in recent years, are looking to capitalize on the return to profits this year of most big U.S. carriers.
The push for better deals by workers, who’ve seen ranks thinned 25% since 2000, is creating an increasingly tense relations [...]

More children are crowding into classrooms in Modesto, Calif. Parents are paying extra to send their kids to full-day kindergarten in Queen Creek, Ariz. And the school buses stopped rolling in one St. Louis area school district.
These are but a few of the unwelcome changes greeting children as they start the school year. Tight fiscal [...]

USA TODAY:
Rapidly rising pay and benefits in the armed forces have lifted many military towns into the ranks of the nation’s most affluent communities, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
The hometown of the Marines’ Camp Lejeune — Jacksonville, N.C. — soared to the nation’s 32nd-highest income per person in 2009 among the 366 U.S. metropolitan areas, [...]

USA TODAY
Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction and other heavy machinery, said Thursday that it will build a hydraulic excavator manufacturing plant in Victoria, Texas, that will employ more than 500 people.
The plant will triple Caterpillar’s hydraulic excavator production capacity in the U.S., and double the number of Caterpillar’s U.S. employees making excavators. Construction [...]

Cash-strapped cities and counties have been cutting jobs to cope with massive budget shortfalls — and that tally could edge up to nearly 500,000 if Congress doesn’t step up to help.
Local governments are looking to eliminate 8.6% of their total full-time equivalent positions by 2012, according to a new survey released Tuesday by the National [...]

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it was recalling more than 400,000 older-model vehicles sold in the United States, citing potential steering-related problems in both.
The Japanese automaker said the recall would affect 373,000 Toyota Avalons manufactured between 2000 to 2004. The company said the vehicle’s steering lock bar could break under certain conditions, increasing the risk [...]

USA TODAY
The unemployment rate in about three-quarters of the nation’s largest metro areas rose last month as nearly one million teenagers entered the work force looking for summer jobs.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that the unemployment rate rose in 291 of 374 areas in June from May. It fell in 55 areas and was flat [...]

// The glass ceiling has cracked, but women are still lagging behind men in earnings — by over $10,000 in median annual income. The gap, however, continues to narrow. Our friends at Mint.com recently illustrated the current state of affairs in this infographic.

Read more: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/07/27/wage-disparity-between-men-and-women-gradually-shrinking/#ixzz0uyXyQE1J

United Technologies will cut another 1,500 this year and next on top of the 900 positions it has already eliminated in 2010, the company said Monday.
The industrial conglomerate last week posted almost a 14 percent increase in second-quarter net income, citing a “relentless focus on cost.” It cut deeply into its payroll during the worst [...]

Recent college graduates lucky enough to nab jobs are earning even less than their counterparts did a year ago, according to a recent survey.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers said in its quarterly report on salaries that 2010 graduates’ average starting salary was $48,661, down 1.3 percent from the initial salaries of 2009 graduates.
People [...]