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.
Yeah, this "battered" economy is killing me. Especially the years of solid growth, low inflation and low unemployment. Brutal.
Somebody's got to be pulling my, err, leg.
Not to mention "Larry Keister".
Right, Keister! LOL, hubby said April Fools came early at the AP! V's wife.
This is PURE bunk. It is NOT a matter of the "whole world" being caught in some shift.. it is a matter of politicians and businessmen trying to shake down the average joe for profit motives. America didn't decide to up and change the way it approaches market economics. A few bastard traitors who got into office on other matters have seen fit to sell us all out and tell us - This is the way it is, like it or lump it. Personally, I'll lump it; but, just one question - how many do they want me to give them, one or two? I'd be just as happy with three or four; but, this isn't exactly something out of either your control or mine. But it's being sold as some abstract notion out of everyone's control in hopes you won't all protest too much and ruin it for the treason lobby.
God forbid they should have to live with American sovereignty, market rules and less profit than they could get if slavery were still in vogue. Since nobody is about to let them tatoo your neighbor with a livestock mark in today's world (that would be too blatent), they've resorted to dumping you on the street, handing your job to MoaYen for .37 cents an hour so they can charge you the same price for reimporting your old product from China and sell in the market they couldn't be bothered to build in.
This is one worlder horse hockey hoping to be bought as a factual appraisal of the world today. The fact is, we don't have to go along for the ride. We don't have to live with the death of retirement, the death of benefits, the death of the 40 hour workweek, etc. I mean, I don't think I slept through the years of my life where I learned that market forces in the US are what produced these things.. and that those market forces would be what saw them out. Yet, today, we watch as politicians tell us how it will be because they have an agenda.. Since when. Last I checked, this was still America. Last I checked, nobody here had a sign on their back saying "will lay down for nonsense from politicians", yet that's precisely what the treason lobby et al expect Americans to do. "Shut up and take it. This is the way it is." It seems to me that isn't far from what King George told our founding fathers many years ago - and it didn't sit well then either...
IT'S THE UNIONS, STUPID!
This must'a been 'ghost-written' by Lucy Ramirez... during a conference-call with Mary Mapes & Howard Dean.
Naahhh........Posthumus was our Lt. Governor for years....
NAFTA and CAFTA are travesties, granted. I personally am doing great under Bush's fantastic economic management. Except for illegal aliens, W's doing well there.
I personally blame any middle-class shrinkage on greedy unions and traitorous politicians, not W.
Havoc, the Unions have forced this on themselves and us, no? Now, as to your point about, I think, multi-nationals benefitting from politicians who take OUR money to pave highways, maintain ports, support satellite systems, the internet, federal funded communications and the like, ie, all the infrastructure that makes markets viable and that we, the American shlubs, fund-well, I think you are spot on about that. It's a bit of a shake down. V's wife.
You're right; we can move to France. In the USA, if you're valuable, you'll do ok. But if you want to tighten bolts for $30/hour and a hefty pension, those days are gone.
"Middle Class Job Losses Batter Economy"
Looks to me like the correct title should have been:
"Union Job Losses Better Economy"
http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0508/09/A01-274912.htm
John Sheehan, Delphi's acting chief financial officer, said the company is seeking an agreement with the UAW that would make Delphi more competitive with rivals such as Johnson Controls Inc. and Dana Corp., which pay lower wages.
"It's a fair summary to say it's the crux of what we're trying to achieve," Sheehan said.
As part of its 1999 split from GM, Delphi is locked into the same contract covering pay, benefits and job and income security -- at an annual cost of nearly $130,000 per worker -- as the carmaker.
Other suppliers "do not have the same post-employment benefits, the same wage rates, don't have the same guaranteed employment, don't have the same prohibition from facilities closing," Sheehan said.
In May 2004, Delphi won the right to pay new hourly workers a lower starting wage of $14 an hour, as well as offer reduced benefits. But production cuts at GM have slowed Delphi's efforts to hire employees at the lower wage. And as part of the separation agreement with GM, laid-off hourly Delphi workers can apply for open positions at GM. But the automaker is also downsizing and has not been able to accommodate many so-called "flowback" employees.
Delphi also wants relief from job and income security agreements with the union that require Delphi to pay an estimated 4,000 workers who remain idled. In the second quarter, those costs totaled more than $100 million.
"We can no longer afford to continue to pay all-in wage and benefit costs of approximately $130,000 per year per U.S. hourly worker," Delphi Chairman and CEO Robert S. "Steve" Miller said Monday.
Starting pay under the supplemental agreement is $14 an hour for all new Delphi hires. The hourly pay rate grows to $18.50, $16.50 or $14.50, depending on the work performed. At major Detroit automakers, the hourly rate for an assembler is $25.57; a janitor starts at $24.98, and tool and die workers start at $30 an hour.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.
Union Sundown ~ Bob Dylan
Who sets trade policy? Offshoring at EDS, IBM and HP had nothing to do with unions. It had to do with Companies deciding they didn't want to pay americans to do jobs in america. More, they didn't want to pay professionals the going rate and decided to bail on America to get a cut rate price elsewhere while re-importing their services at below market cost to undermine the rest of the market and thusly drive wages and benifits down. In short, they have used the rest of the world to their advantage in manipulating our market - subverting it for "higher" profits. Unions didn't do that, they're just one of the lame excuses the treason lobby invokes for undermining the nation for profit.
Without all the benefits and just at minimum wage, No one in this country could compete with .37 cents an hour. No one. When the least common denominator can't compete with foriegn labor, the last people you can blame any of this on is the Unions. Basic logic. If 5.53 an hour can't compete, whether 30 dollars an hour can or not is moot. Clinton and George W share blame in this along with the politicians in both parties that have been responsible for signing off on both presidential trade policies. W doesn't get a pass, sorry. I love my president; but I also left the party because of him. Some of us hold people to account for their actions - it's why we aren't democrats. But, somehow, in the minds of well-to-dos here, we're supposed to think that way with dems and then switch our brains into neutral around pubs doing the same or worst. Ain't happinin.
If your work isn't worth any more than the pay the Chinese worker gets, upon what basis should I and others pay you more?
When my job was offshored, I wasn't doing any thing so useless as tightening bolts for $30bucks an hour. I was responsible for fixing computer problems that caused hundreds to millions of dollars in downtime per minute. My job wasn't Union. So, tell me precisely how the unions which have to do with a minor percentage of offshored jobs brought this on all of us? Blow smoke elsewhere. Unions may be abusive, and on that we will far more than agree; but, they are not the reason for what is happening by far. Companies don't want to pay market rates. So they've settled for subversion because it's profitable. Chambers was right. And I'm with Coulter, the left would hate him too but it would require some reading..
You were in a job that was bound to go bust. With the huge surge in networking and computerization in the late 80s and 90s, there was a shortage of IT professionals in the marketplace....some were being hired at 6 figures!
Lots of people became IT certified and the market was then flooded.
Your job loss was simple supply and demand.
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