ILO: Auto industry to shift more jobs to developing world

The Centre Daily Times ^ | Fri, Jan. 07, 2005 | BRADLEY S. KLAPPER -- Associated Press

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

GENEVA - China, India and Eastern Europe will take more jobs away from the Western world's car workers over the next 10 years, as the automotive industry moves its parts-making operations from industrialized countries, the U.N. labor agency said Friday.

Factories in Japan, the United States and Western Europe are becoming assemblers of finished cars from parts made in other countries, where labor costs are a fraction of those in the West, said the International Labor Organization in a 144-page study.

"The increasing importance of suppliers will benefit emerging markets, particularly Central and Eastern Europe, China and India, allowing them to increase their share of global components production," the report said.

Auto industry jobs will fall or stagnate in the big three auto-producing regions, but China's employment in the sector will more than double by 2015 and its workers producing auto parts will more than triple, the report said.

"The potential for companies in advanced countries to lower labor costs by outsourcing, coupled with the pressure to continuously reduce costs," means that the developing world is "where it is almost certain that employment in future years will increase the most," ILO said.

Many Western automobile producers "have begun to treat Chinese component costs as the global benchmark for their suppliers elsewhere," where auto-industry workers make anywhere from 60 cents to $1.30 an hour, ILO said.

Wages in the United States are up to 25 times higher and in Germany up to 30 times higher, the report said.

The North American automotive manufacturing labor market shrank by 140,000 jobs, or 2.6 percent, between 2000 and 2003, with 70 percent of the losses borne by auto parts workers, according to the report. Many of these jobs have already gone to China and India, breaking the trend of U.S. companies expanding or relocating to Mexico, ILO said.

German firms in the automobile sector created 271,000 jobs abroad and 71,800 domestically between 1991 and 2001, according to the report. But the growth of domestic jobs stopped in 2001 and the trend toward "outsourcing" will intensify in the coming years as German companies further develop "offshoring plans" to its neighbors to the east, according to the report.

North America's share of global component manufacturing revenues may decline 11 percent and Western Europe's 20 percent by 2010, while Asia's share is expected to almost triple and Central Europe will gain 31 percent, the report said.

[Willie Green]

The downward spiral into standard of living parity with the Third World continues.

[Willie Green]

Many Western automobile producers "have begun to treat Chinese component costs as the global benchmark for their suppliers elsewhere," where auto-industry workers make anywhere from 60 cents to $1.30 an hour,

60¢ an hour???
That's only $4.80 for an 8-hour work day.
Cripes, Henry Ford was paying $5 back in 1914, and that's when a buck could actually buy something.
How the heck are you supposed to compete with slave wages like THAT???

[JFK_Lib]

Will the last industrial worker leaving America please turn out the lights before they go?

[WilliamofCarmichael]

"The potential for companies in advanced countries to lower labor costs by outsourcing, coupled with the pressure to continuously reduce costs," means that the developing world is "where it is almost certain that employment in future years will increase the most," ILO said.

Like the conservative "free traders" the DLC New Democrat Third Way progressives are not concerned about losing American jobs to emerging nations (developing countries). That omelet thingy.

What do the DLC New Democrat Third Way progressives, globalization partners of conservative "free traders'" transfer of wealth to emerging nations, have to say about the ILO?

Boy do they love the ILO!

Here's one, "The WTO's regular 'Trade Policy Reviews' should include a section, written by the ILO, describing a country's ratification and enforcement of the ILO's core labor standards. This would help shine a brighter spotlight on abuses of labor rights by WTO members. Similarly, a joint ILO/WTO working group should consider ways to ensure that the ILO and WTO's work is complementary and reinforcing. . . ."

http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=5&kaid=116&subid=152&contentid=1499

You are already kissing WTO butt, one more butt won't matter. Eh, "free traders"? There goes that "cheap" labor.

The Clintons and company are for rules-based "free trade," social justice, economic justice, racial justice, and environmental justice. They intend to make the rules.

They just need a bunch of corporate useful idiots to help them and their internationalists comrades.

My standard warning for useful idiots. Sometime in the future one or more of the following, DLC, ILO, WTO, UN will ask if you sell rope. When that happens, RUN!