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Show TheSalt LakeGribune BUSINESS ME. CHARLESJAFFE, E-3. MI RHONDA ABRAMS, E-4 I CONVENTIONS, E-4 MM WEEKLY PLANNER, E-4 KlTOy SUNDAY JANUARY34, 1999 ml HUMBERTO CRUZ, E-5 fing Firm Leaves Trail of Troubles Workers and companies who wereclients of Paragon BusinessSolutionsface liabilities of some $1 million BY PHIL SAHM THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE last fall. Terms of Nearly four months after state regulators shut down Paragon Business Solutions of America Inc., business owners and workersassociated with the company face A few months before First Utah Compiled by Lisa Carricaburu ae Theme Parks Report Drop in Attendance ‘Theme parks spend millions of dollars on new rides andattractions to parks suffered a combined 1 percent drop in attendance in 1998, the first drop since 1991. The trade publication blamedthe dip on a lackluster FERS claims and delinquenttaxes. The full damage caused by the mismanagement of Paragon and its affiliate companies is unknown. But Paragon's court-appointed overseer estimates liabilities at nearly $1 million. performance by the big guys, including Walt Disney Co. — The Orlando Sentinel a The CEO Unmasked It’s lonely at the top, but it may be company.Until last summer, Paragon appearedto be a solid, growing company. But in June, the presidentof First Utah Bank — the bank Paragon used for its businesses — discovered $12.8 million missing. At the time, the sum represented. about 25 percentof the bank’s assets. FormerPresident John Hanson, whosince has retired from First Utah, said Paragon's principals, Diane C. and Steven C. Christensen of Sandy, misappropriated the money through electronic transfers from their account. The Christensens deny taking the money. The bank’s owners infused several million dollars into the bank, sued the Christensensandsettled the case health plan. If those bills are not paid, Fassmansaid he will pay them himself. Paragon deducted money from employee paychecks for Quality Plating’s 401(k) plan, but did not pay it to the plan administrator, Fassman said. “This whole thing has been bad for employee mo rale,” he said. Even Paragon’s own employees becameentangled in ferred his employ- ees to the Paragon companies in an employee-leasing arrangement. This made Paragon responsible for ensuring Awnings “Thisis a real sore issue for me,”said Bill LaBronte, keep visitors coming back. But are the parks beginning to lose their allure? That was a question raised when Amusement Business reported that, despite a robust U.S. economy, North America’s 50 most popular $6,000 in medicalbills that remain unpaid by Paragon’s not public. discovered the missing money, LaBronte trans- unpaid medicalbills, fouled-up workers-compensation who owns Awnings Unlimited in South Salt Lake. LaBronte’s companyis one of nearly 200 that hired the Paragon companies to handle payroll and benefits for employees. Paragon served as the umbrella companyfor Professional Staffing Advantages Inc., an employee-leasing Lake City, estimates his employees owe $5,000 to the settlementare the mess Ex-Paragon worker Kyle Stowell thought the compa nyhealth plan would cover his 2-year-old son's surgery to correct crossed eyes. Not so far. Between the surgery and medical expenses for his wife, Stowell estimates he has $6,000 in unpaid bills. doubt I'm going to get my[insurance] moneyout of Unlimited's in- them,”he said. cometaxes, Social Security, insur- ‘eve Griffin/TheSalt Lake Tribune Awnings Unlimited ownerBill LaBronteis as formerclient ; of Jeffrey Poore, the court-appointed overseer of Paragon and its affiliates, estimates unpaid medical bills from Paragon’s self-insured health plan at $150,000to ance and other benefits were ‘ aid. Paragon Business Solutions. $200,000. Individual claims range from a few hundred dollars to more than $50,000 LaBronte’s brief experience with Paragon included bounced paychecks, unpaid workers-compensation claims and denied health benefits. Paragon also took $5,000 for workers-compensation insurance, he said, but never bought the in- Paragon collected premiums from employees of its customer companies and placed the moneyin First Utah Bank. The account, intended to pay medical claims, currently holds about $160,000. surance, But neither Poore nor First Utah can find a trust document designating the account for medical claims. Andthe bank,still looking to recover as muchofits loss DianeChristensen refutes that claim, saying Awnings Unlimited had workers-compensation coverage. Similar problemsaffected other companiesthat hired Paragon. Glenn Fassman, who owns Quality Plating in Salt See Paragon's, Page E-5 lonelier for men than for women,according to a survey of chief execu- said they believe they are satisfying their constituencies, but female executives voiced greater satisfaction with their own job performance and with their personallives than did the men. — The WallStreet Journal o Fewer Union Dues In the midst of the strongest employment market in morethan a generation, labor unions gained just 100,000 new members last year even as they watched the proportion of union workers in the economy contin- ue slide to levels not seen since the 1930s. Union membership grew to * 16.2 million last year. But the percentage of union members dropped from 14.1 percent of the overall workforce in 1997 to 13.9 percent last year. — Newsday o Consumers Go Cordless OPELESTIFEEES: Just as wireless cellular phones have captured the fancy of footloose Americans, their cordless cousins have become a dominant feature in the home. According to newstatistics from the ConsumerElectronics Manufacturers Association, 1997 marked thefirst year that sales of cordless phones surpassed those of corded models. More than 28 million units were shipped, representing a 37 percent increase over 1996. — The Chicago Tribune a Go Without Me JW Genesis Financial Corp., a Boca Raton, Fla., brokerage firm, has found an unusual way to reward employees who work atleast three weekend days in a month. It gives the worker's spouse or significant other tickets to concerts, shows or sporting ents for use while the spouse is anothertime. : Wall Street Journal o Serve Up the Cerveza Not that long ago, sales of Corona Extra and Budweiser at El Jardin’s Phone Deregulation Yet To Find Its Way Home Most new telephone companies are competingto serve businesses BY STEVEN OBERBECK ‘THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Pick up the telephone andlisten. If you are a Utah homeowner, it is a Nationally, the number of CLECs setting their own networks of switches and lines has grown to nearly 150 from just 13 prior to 1996. They have invested billions, laying safe bet the dial tone you hearis being delivered by US West. The 1996 Telecommunications Act 80,000 miles of fiber-optic line and installing hundreds of switches so they can was supposed to changethat. It was supposedto help give homeowners in Utah and nationwide the opportunity to choose which company provides them with the Baby Bells’ already-established phonenetworks. “The act in and of itself gave competitors the opportunity to go into the local It has not happened. Nearly three years after Congress passed the legislation in February 1996, vice president of industry affairs for the them with residential phoneservice. the country’s telecommunications indus- try is busy examining what the act has wrought. One thing is obvious: If success is measured by how many homeowners get their phone service from a company other than one of the Baby Bells formed from the breakup of the Bell System and AT&T,the act so far hasfailed. “Consumers arestill waiting for the benefits that were promised. They are still waiting for competition in the local market,” said Bill Levis, MCI/World- com director of western public policy That does not mean there has been no voice business,” said Cronan O'Connell, companies — known as competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) — have entered Utah to offer telephone servicein competition with US West. Bl 2s ‘A MARKET VALUATION { — 1998 1995 MARKETSHARE CLEC Moret Share 7 $1.1 ‘Bilion 99.5% BabyBells 94.6% BabyBells residential users. They have concentrat- ed on providing services to businesses because it is more profitable Businesses often demand and payfor extra high-margin services. FIBER OPTIC MILES INSTALLEDCLECs | Still, from the CLECs’ pointof view. the act has been a monumental success, 2 distance business Yet almost fromthestart, would-be 2 °w a 3 Source: that carries light 4 LOR E1006: Rhonda Hailes Maylett Association for Local Telecommunications Services: ‘They arguedover theterms andcondi- tions under whichaccessto thelocal net work would beset ‘They arguedover thecost of accessing terms the “local loop” or the“last I ‘The Salt Lake Tribune call is switched and connections made. ‘They argued over who shouldset the rates — the individual states or the Fed eral Communications Commission With the battle lines being drawn, it referto the wires betwe competitors and the regional Bell oper: ating companies were at odds bundle of glass strands pulses, é cess," O'Connell said. “But we would markets to competition, they could get into the highly lucrativeinterstate long- A fiberoptic cable is a 9 “There is no doubt that from an eco- lines and switches, If the Baby Bells openedtheir local 115 ———— $ even if they have yet to make the leap to providing residential service. nomic perspective, it has been a suc- nies that are competing in US West'sterritor Since 1996, nearly two dozen national : tions Services. “Pretty much up until 1996 there were rules and regulations that precluded potential competitors from going in and competing.” Unfortunately for the average consumer, new competitors have ignored have been further along if some of the big issues had been addressedup front.”” The 1996 act was designed to open local telephone markets by providing an incentive for Baby Bells to allow competing companiesto tie into their system of entrants into the marketplace, compa- 175 g 8 150}-146 ss 125 3s gg 100 88) 7s Association for Local Telecommunica- progress. The successof the 1996 actis a lot like beauty; it is in the eye of the mission chairman. “But we do have new Since passageof the Telecommunications Act of 1996, new competitors known as CLECs, or competitive local exchangecarriers, have emerged to challenge US Westandthe other BabyBells for a shareoftheir telephone business. transfer their customers’ calls and link beholder. “The progress [toward competition] has been slower than I expected, slower than many people expected,” said Stephen Mecham, Utah Public Service Com- Growing Telecommunications Competition CLEC MarketCapitalization (in Billions) tives by Willard & Shullman Group, a market-research company in Greenwich, Conn. Virtually all the CEOs See PHONES,PageE-5 er’s home and thenearest office where a Fiesta Cantina in Wrigleyville, Ill ran bottleneck and neck. But after the Mexican-theme dance club introduced a Thursday “‘salsa night," the predominantly Hispanic crowd helped Corona dethrone Budweiser as the reigning king of beers. It's as clear as Corona’s signature long-neck bottle that la cerveza fria de Mejico has become muy caliente in America, making Mexican imports the fastest growing category in a beer business that has goneflat. Corona isn't alone. Sales of Tecate, Modelo Especial and Dos Equis Amber surged 20 percent or more in the past year. — The Chicago Tribune Oo Pitching Paradise The Aloha State is banking on a quarter-ton sumo wrestler floating in & huge inner tube and singing “Blue Hawaii” to reviveits faltering tour. ism industry, Hawaiian-born former sumochampion Konishiki, who weighs in at about 585 pounds, will haveto makea big splash — the state has suffered its first decline in tour ism in five years. The primary cause was a 10 percent decline in Japanese visitors still battered by Asia's pro: longed economic flu. The Associated Press Book Looks at Why Women Sabotage One Another in Workplace usually lower on BY RAYMOND McCAFFREY the corporate ladder than men. they feel more KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE Linda Tripp and Tonya Harding might go down in history as feminism’'s worst nightmare. Their devious deed: They sabotaged another woman — Monica Lewinsky in Tripp's case and Nancy Kerri- threatened in the workplace. They tendto strike out gan in Harding's. They set a sister up, knocked her down, stabbed her in the back and left her writhing on the floor while they walked away without a second thought "It's despicable, it's catty — andit's all too common,” says Judith Briles, author of the new book Woman to more at other women, whom they are more Linda Tripp Tonya Harding likely to have power over, Briles says. Woman 2000,” which explores woman-on-womansabo- “It's also really important tostress that this is not an tagein the workplace. According to Briles, more than 75 percent of women exclusive femaleissue,” Briles says. ‘This goes on with men, too, but there aredifferences, Men are usually moreovert, blatant. Womenare morelikely to deliver sabotage in a more covert way. Like the wind, youcan feel it It’s present and in one survey she conductedsaid they had been “under. mined" by another woman in the workplace. Some common sabotage tactics: somebody taking credit for your work, failing to give you important messages, betraying confidences, passing on false informa tion about you It can be as simple as plain old-fashioned gossip, which is one of the easiest ways to destroy one's ca reer,” says Briles, who lives in the Denver area. Whyare so many sabotaging their fellow women? Briles believes one reason is fear: Since women are here, but you'rejust not sure whereit originated Briles’ theory could be considered heresy in feminist circles. After all, wasn't the women’s movement all about empowering a sisterhood readyto takeits right ful place in what had long been a man's world? Well, certainly that sisterhood does exist. Witness organizations such as the Colorado Springs, Colo., non profit W 's Resource Agency, which, for rougyly a quarterof a century, has been helping women enter the workplacethrough workshops and one-on-onecounsel ing. I've worked in a women’s organization for a long time and we've always worked as a team,” says Betty Osgood, a counselor at the agency. However, Osgoodand Briles appear to be on the same pageonat least onecount, Osgoodseesa lot of the same insecurity in women that Briles does. A lot of women seemto lack confidence,” Osgood says, “It's very scary for womento enter the world of work especiallyif they've been homemakersfor a while Their focus has been on their family,”” rayne LoCascio, a Colorado Springs real estate ap praiser, has run into a different kind of woman in the workplace I'd work with a guy any day," LoCascio. says ‘There's something about the female gender. What | havefoundis if you work very hard and do very well, womentry to drag you down, I have found rather than try to work together. they work against each other,’ LoCascio, now 34, recalls that when she was 27 and working her way through college, an older female co worker in her office reacted poorly when LoCascio was promoted See SABOTAGE AT WORK] Page E-5 |