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.
But it's a waste of time and effort, to attempt to teach many years worth of history, to those who apparently slept through all of their classes and never bothered to read much of anything outside of school.
That is sheer ignorance speaking. Sorry. You need to get a grip on reality. And I didn't have a UAW job. Why do your kind always persist in making rash assumptions and basing conclusions on those rash assumptions if not to pollute the debate with nonsequiters. It's as good as lying to make a point..
Bunk. Next treason lobby twit rationalization.
I notice this article mentions NOTHING about WHY those jobs are gone, eh? Why am I not Surprised?
And it has so little to do with WAGES.....
Over-Taxation....
Over-Unionization....
Over-Regulation....
Inane Enviro Laws...
Unlimited Civil Liability...
Advances in Technology....
The Standardized Shipping Container....
The Computer....
The Internet....
You gotta' admit, 8 years of Perot would've been much more preferrable to 8 years of Clinton.
Sorry; but, no. Liberals have their own pathetic version of things just like you have your pathetic version of things. US companies got their start and their licenses to do business in the US here - in the US. They aren't owed that license and they don't have a right to it. And, yes, in a world where loyalty means something, it does matter where one occupies himself in business terms. There are laws and ethics which
rule the situation as much as market forces. Liberals tend not to give a D@mn about either the law or ethics any more than you do. Republicans and myself, by and large do care about both.. apparently you've heard of this at some point...
I think you may have missed the point, which was conflating economic indicators with other indicators, dismissively referred to elsewhere as ethereal or ephemeral in nature.
From the link you supplied:
Notable is the fact that the United States has tumbled from the top 10 economies, falling two spots from its 2004 ranking into a tie for 12th with Switzerland. This drop reflects the policy improvements made by the world's freest countries. Although remaining a "free" economy, the U.S. has been treading water while other nations are improving their scores and surpassing it in the rankings.
I suppose free-traders might argue that America is not moving fast enough to reduce trade barriers that seem to have served it well for the first 200 years of its existence. Probably at least some fair traders would argue that the drop in the index wrt to the US is an indicator of downwards harmonization. That's a tie. I would argue that economic freedom is a term that leads to conflation of concepts in logical argument-- freedom and economics, or certain free trade economics, to be more exact.
Yes, reducing government control at every opportunity is a good thing. Creating barriers to trade is just another form of government control.
OK, we part company where economics is elevated over all other forms of human activity in importance and reflected in government affairs. I guess an economist would even argue that the ink used to pen "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was simply a waste, or perhaps should have been re-phrased or at least interpreted as "economic freedom." I am not sure this was the case, and I am not sure that others would agree either.
Speaking of enlightened economic policies...I tend to like Milton Friedman. He said: Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
The quote leads me to conclude that Mr. Friedman -- he's an economist, isn't he? -- is very self-confident in both his own convictions and his defense of his profession. I'm sorry, but forgive me that I don't sense the logic of the words he uses, nor his reasoning from the quote alone. Friedman's quote just sounds to me like a prime example of conflated rhetoric, and perhaps even a somewhat dismal one at that (smile).
My personal experience is traveling to Mexico immediately after NAFTA-- remember the rosy promises made in both countries? Mexico devalued its currency soon afterwards, and a lot of hurting people there became even more hard-pressed. Hertz tried to stiff me for the effects then-recent devaluation by insisting I pay for my reservation in a revised cost that reflected the new exchange rate in dollars, not pesos, at the counter. I found it both humorous and sad. So much for economic freedom. PS, free trade or not, economic freedom or not, I won that argument with Hertz. I have little tolerance for economic flimflam-- zero tolerance when it comes to free trade flimflam versus natural rights and environmental protection.
We all pay for what we get and we all eventually reap what we sow-- one way or another. Flimflam free trade arguments will lead to harmonization, and downwards harmonization will lead to a harmonized standard of living. When the US harmonizes with third world countries with free trade, it will get third world standards of living. It's simple economics.
but is so much easier to just think I am heartless than to do some homework on the facts....
I did not pic the nic eeevil conservative for nothin'..LOL!
I know I will be accused of it-- I choose to embrace it! and Wear it like a BADGE!
You're dodging. Assault and battery and theft were'nt mentioned or alluded to in my point. Go back and read because the point was fair competition. When you lost the point you dodged it.. just want it clear that you fudged. Thanks.
ROFLLLLLL!!!!
you said "inbreeding"
ROFLLLLLLLLL!!!!!
PERFECT!
Please don't call me "sweety", that's not appropriate terminology for friendly discourse. In any case, I think that anyone making over fifty thou a year is overpaid. Take pay cuts! I want to pay even less for YOUR services so I can live even more cheaply!
No, you just seem to think it's useful to apply "bitter" to me in passing as though it makes some point for you. In point of fact I'm having the time of my life laughing myself silly on this end while I listen to Ann Coulter play in the background. She's a real inspiration for dealing with the ethically challenged.
Thank you. I strive for clarity amidst a group consistently trying to fog it up. Wanna grab something and have a go - they keep popping up through these little holes over here...
You have no way of knowing that and Perot, had he somehow managed to become president, would most assuredly have mucked things up...BIG TIME!
Is there some way to do a "list" search on FR?
Anyhow...
Where was the "loyalty", when companies, in the mid 19th century fired employees, when they got mangled in machines?
Do you actually know ANY factual American history?
Compared to Bill, I would've probably settled for the devil...
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