Posted on 01/02/2006 4:19:44 AM PST by ventana
AP Middle-Class Job Losses Batter Workforce Sunday January 1, 8:53 pm ET By Kathy Barks Hoffman, Associated Press Writer Middle-Class Job Losses Batter Workforce As Companies Slash Payrolls, Send Jobs Overseas
LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Thirty years ago, Dan Fairbanks looked at the jobs he could get with his college degree and what he could make working the line at General Motors Corp., and decided the GM job looked better.
He still thinks he made the right choice. But with GM planning to end production of the Chevrolet SSR and shut down the Lansing Craft Centre where he works sometime in mid-2006, Fairbanks faces an uncertain future.
"Back when I hired in at General Motors 30 years ago, it seemed like a good, secure job," said Fairbanks, president since June of UAW Local 1618. Since then, "I've seen good times and I've seen bad times. This qualifies as a bad time, in more ways than one."
Many of the country's manufacturing workers are caught in a worldwide economic shift that is forcing companies to slash payrolls or send jobs elsewhere, leaving workers to wonder if their way of life is disappearing.
The trend in the manufacturing sector toward lower pay, fewer benefits and fewer jobs is alarming many of them.
"They end up paying more of their health care and they end up with lousier pensions -- if they keep one at all," says Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney. As wages and benefits drop, "it's the working class that's paying the price."
West Virginia steelworkers are all too familiar with the problem. The former Weirton Steel Corp., which 20 years ago had some 13,000 employees, today has just 1,300 union workers left on the job.
The steel mill has changed hands twice in two years, and just last month, Mittal Steel Co. told the Independent Steelworkers Union it would permanently cut the jobs of 800 people who'd been laid off since summer.
Larry Keister, 50, of Weirton, W.Va., has 31 years in the mill that his father and brothers all joined. His son tried, but got laid off quickly.
"I'm too old to go back to school. I've worked there all my life," says Keister, who drives a buggy in the tin mill. "I went there straight out of high school. It's all I know."
Though Keister is safe for now from layoffs, he wonders what will happen to the hundreds of friends and co-workers who will be jobless by the end of January.M
Gary Colflesh, 56, of Bloomingdale, Ohio, said there are few jobs in nearby Ohio or Pennsylvania for workers to move to.
"They're destroying the working class. Why can't people see this?" asked the 38-year veteran. "Anybody who works in manufacturing has no future in this country, unless you want to work for wages they get in China."
Abby Abdo, 52, of Weirton, said workers once believed that if they accepted pay cuts and shunned strikes, they would keep their jobs. Not anymore.
"Once they get what they want, they kick us to the curb," he said. "There's no guarantee anymore. No pensions. No health care. No job security. We have none of those things anymore."
Fairbanks of the Lansing GM plant said the changes are going to force a lot of people to retrench to deal with the new economic reality. For some, it will make it harder to send their children to college or be able to retire when they want. For others, it will mean giving up some of the trappings a comfortable income can bring.
"You're going to see lake property, you're going to see boats, you're going to see motorcycles hit the market," he said. "People get rid of the toys."
Economists agree the outlook is changing for workers who moved from high school to good-paying factory jobs two and three decades ago, or for those seeking that lifestyle now.
"It was possible for people with a high school education to get a job that paid $75,000 to $100,000 and six weeks of paid vacation. Those jobs are disappearing," says Patrick Anderson of Anderson Economic Group in East Lansing, Mich. "The ... low-skill, upper-middle-class way of life is in danger."
General Motors Corp. has announced that it plans to cut 30,000 hourly jobs by 2008. Ford Motor Co. is scheduled to announce plant closings and layoffs in January that could affect at least 15,000 workers in the United States and Mexico, analysts say, and is cutting thousands from its white-collar work force.
GM and Ford have won concessions from the United Auto Workers that will require active and retired workers to pick up more of their health care costs, and DaimlerChrysler AG is seeking similar concessions.
Thomas Klier, senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, says the transition for manufacturers toward leaner, lower-cost operations has been going on for some time. But the bankruptcy of the nation's largest auto supplier, Delphi Corp., pushed the issue into the headlines.
Its 34,000 hourly U.S. workers could see their pay cut from $27 an hour to less than half of that, although the company is still trying to work out a compromise unions will support. Workers also could have to pay health care deductibles for the first time and lose their dental and vision care coverage.
Delphi worker Michael Balls of Saginaw, Mich., hears the argument that U.S. companies' costs are too high to compete with plants that pay workers less overseas, but he doesn't buy it.
"I think if Delphi wins, they lose," he says. "If I'm making $9 an hour, I'm not making enough to buy vehicles."
Unfortunately for workers like Balls, the old rules no longer apply in the new global economy, says John Austin, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Brookings Institute.
"We're in a different ball game now," Austin says. "We're going to be shedding a lot of the low-education manufacturing jobs."
Some of those workers are likely to try to move into the growing service sector, Austin says. But he says the transition can be tough, even if the jobs pay as well as the ones they had -- and many don't.
"Pointing out a medical technician job is available if they go back and get a certificate doesn't solve the issue today for those 45-year-olds who are losing their jobs at Delphi," he said.
Dick Posthumus, a partner in an office furniture system manufacturing company in Grand Rapids, Mich., says that "basic, unskilled manufacturing is going to be done in China, India, places like that because we are in a global world, and there's nothing anyone can do about that."
His company, Compatico Inc., buys much of its basic parts from South Korea, Taiwan, Canada and China, where Posthumus has toured plants he says rival modern manufacturing plants in the U.S. But the company still saves its sophisticated parts-making and assembly for its Michigan plant.
"The manufacturing of tomorrow is going to look somewhat different from the manufacturing of yesterday," Posthumus says. "It doesn't mean that we no longer manufacture ... (But) it's going to be a painful adjustment."
Associated Press Writer Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va., contributed to this story.
I'm sure you will be. Until then, we'll have regulation to keep businesses from employing slaves, child labor, sweatshop conditions, etc. Regulation exists because business sees money and forgets morality. Were that not the case, Government regulation would not be needed. Huff as you like; but, thems the facts.
Really? Got any names there.
BTW, nice little tidbit with the "Republican dirty tricks" remark.
JMO, you're a democrat, longing for the days of the MSM not being challenged.
That would shorten this whole thread by at least two thirds.
Old news. Good grief, about ten years ago"Newsweak" ran a story about a union leader whose sons could not land a job in his industry. None of them had gone to college, figuring they could step into a job like the old man had started in. The difference was that when his old man started, the job wass low-paying; now it was paying more than $20.00 an hor. plus benefits, and the company was cutting slots. A union card used to be an inheritance. No more, at least not often.
In 25 years, I've changed my field of occupation three times. Over the last 15 years I've constantly had to learn the latest technical things needed to maintain my current occupation.
This woe-is-me, big-government-protect-me-from-those-foreign-countries-who-may-offer-better-services-than-I, class-warfare is BS.
"Republican dirty tricks" is what Perot called it back then.
Do try to keep up.
As for names, no, just experience, which you might have gotten if you'd bothered to actually read my last post instead of look for an excuse to opt out of a losing argument by throwing a label you couldn't defend any better than your argument.
How we doing so far.. buy a clue.
Yeah and I suppose Larry King and CNN really did want, then didn't want and then did want again, Ross Perot as president instead of Bill Clinton.
What a circus act.
LOL!
BS, and you know it, "Republican dirty tricks" libral/socialist slang goes back to Nixon.
Exactly right. It's called freedom. It comes with risks. I accept them. I don't ask my government to protect me with artificial tarrifs or price supports. I am on my own. When I cannot compete, I am through.
It's not treason to try and get the best value for your money.
It's actually a very American thing to do.
You mean you don't shop at Wal-Mart and get Chinese-made stuff?
I'd rather take a low risk of serious problems than know I'm going to freeze myself half to death for six months every year, which is a dead certainty if I stay where I am. (I can't afford California's high cost of living right now :-( ). You can all but eliminate your risks by staying out of Metro Manila and avoiding the Muslim parts of the Philippines (in particular the island of Mindano).
Besides, it's better to be able to get a social disease, most of which are perfectly curable, than it is to be in a place where you can't get a date(*).
D
(*) I know your next argument, so I'd better mention that AIDS is a very low risk in the Philippines, probably lower than in the US.
No, never. But we now have the internet and FR. Booyah! V's wife
I have a conscience. It tells me that I should not ask another for my support. I accept the risks of freedom. When I can't compete with anyone who chooses to challenge my place in the market, I am done. No crying to my government or a labor union or my employer for help. I am on my own in this world and I accept that with maturity and honesty. That's what my conscience tells me.
Who cares what they wanted. Perot took 19% after he bailed. Clinton couldn't even get a simple majority in two terms. Perot disaffected his base and much of his following when he bailed initially and still got 19%. It was unheard of; but, the guy had popular support. If it hadn't been for the dirty tricks, he'd have won. Plain and simple.
Do you have a more concise, logical point to make, or is "circus act" the best you can do? At least knitpick my spelling or something to show us how intelligent you are by comparison. I'll even give you a freabie <-- hint. Did you catch it, or do you need help?
From personl experience in the IT field I will tell you this:
I can get Chinese programmers who are every bit as good (and better at following instructions) in basic analysis and certainly generating code for 1/10th what I get for them here. So I should bay a 1000% premium to get a local resource? And it probably will be a H1B from India and not USA-born person anyway.
The skills I use (and need) are the ability to see the problem, understand the environment within which the problem needs to be solved. The ability to organize, track, create functional and technical specifications and MANAGE those dime for a buck Chinese developers.
All the locals I have tried to put in have failed miserably in these areas. They just want to program and code. I don't know if you are this category or not. If so, you are indeed the IT equivilant of a bolt-tightener.
Personally, I am in very high demand in my company and have never even worried for a second about my job getting outsourced, since what I am doing can't be sent out.
How different is that from "To each according to his needs and from each according to his ability"?
I completely agree. Seems to me it's all very circular. After the blue collar jobs have all been either shipped out or given to Illegals/"Guest Workers" for slave wages, we will see Unions rise again. Maybe we'll also get lot's of high tariffs on imports to pay for government run health care.
It's an emotional affliction that's akin to idiocy."
Since you've resorted to insult, you obviously have no rational point to make. I am certain that's not a new experience for you
As is their right. It's called free enterprise. Accept the risks or don't, the game proceeds with you or without you
No kidding - how astute of you to know that. Now if you could read for comprehension and know something a little more recent, you might get somewhere. Amazing your hypersensitivity to a nixon era phrase should blind you to the fact that H. Ross Perot used the phrase in describing what happened to him - probably because it was a well known nixon era phrase - my guess. Are you keeping up, or should I slow down and spoon feed it?
LOL!
If he hadn't bailed in the first place he(Perot) might have won.(BTW, Perot basically said that he was bailing because clinton was leading).
Oh that's right, Perot bailing the first time in 92, was due to "Republican dirty tricks".
LOL!, again.
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