Middle Class Job Losses Batter Economy

Associated Press | January 2 2006 | Associated Press and Vicki Smith

[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.

[1rudeboy]

Bread for the masses. [twisted humor]

[hubbubhubbub]

My wife and I took turns going to night school (while the other stayed home with the kids in the evenings) for five years. We both changed jobs multiple times. We don't have employer pensions but do have 401ks. My point is anyone can make it if they're willing to work hard.

[raybbr]

This should be the end of any discussion that unions are looking out for the workers!!

Of course, your post is about teachers' unions. This thread is about the UAW. Industry in the U.S. has only about 12.5% union representation as opposed to almost 50% in government workers. Over 500 posts and someone (other than me) finally posts a negative article about teachers' unions. What about firemen, policemen, municipal workers' unions, etc?

[raybbr]

Most people don't desire to be millionaires or movie stars. They basically want a house, car and their kids to do marginally better than they did.

That's sure sacrilege on a super-capitalist average American bashing thread.

[durasell]

That's my story and I'm sticking to it....

[TXBSAFH]

I would be happy with that.

[sauropod]

Secondly, bringing old fights, from thread to thread, is a punishable offense here. Would you like to try it out?

Who died and left you Queen?

Your comments stand by themselves as monuments to your hubris.

[sauropod]

A leash???? With no whip?

Seriously, tho, my wife is a FReeperette. FR is actually how we met. 'Pod.

[Paul Ross]

I'm just saying that your "cure" would likely (we will probably never get to find out) erase far more capital and cause far more job losses than doing nothing.

And you know this because of what? History? Wrong again. History supports the policy of a 25% general revenue tariff. In fact, we had an embarrasing problem of what to do with the governmental surplusses.

Anyways, boiling your statement down, you in fact have advocated doing nothing. You are being a defeatist.

..we could reduce it to ZERO by stopping all economic activity....What you suggest comes pretty darn close to that.

And how do you figure THAT? Again, empirically invalid. And in the particulars proposed, I surmise a tariff/sales tax approach would likely LOWER net U.S. tax burdens by shifting completely away from the taxes which punish production and savings and investment. I would advocated repeal of the 16th Amendment also, to make sure that the States can't get around the Federal shift away from income and capital gains taxes.

By your adhering to a broken, Socialist edifice dedicated to Marxian principles,...the income tax, and capital gains tax, it is you who are implicitly opposed to U.S. economic growth and activity. And your trade policies are merely siding with those who are parasitically destroying what is left, and calling that "activity." LOL!

Then there is this:

I'm not saying the $700B trade imbalance is a good thing,....[BUT] ...I am pretty sure....pretty sure....that this doesn't include services. I'm also pretty sure it's skewed a bit by export/reimportation practices (but admittedly, I'm out on a limb) I'm not saying it makes up for $700B, but that number needs some context.

No, it doesn't. Those contexts do not countervail. As the economic report of the President, 2002 said, after trying to put a similar good spin on the Chinese and Japanese enabling continued U.S. manufacturing demise by timely subsidization...by buying our T-Bills...the future is worse still, as the report said:

However the current inflow of capital investment could eventually lead to large investment income payments in the near future. The investment income surplus we now enjoy may soon be eroded thus worsening the current account deficit.

And your are wrong about services not being included in the export import numbers. I.e., again from the Official definitions in the BEA/U.S. Census Bureay, December 2005 Report:

U.S. Exports are any goods or services produced in the U.S. and sold to other countries in the international market. U.S. Imports are goods or services produced by other countries and bought by individuals in the United States

If the Chinese, Japanese and a few other Pacific Rim traders had not been buying our debt, manipulating their currency and the trade imbalances thereby (in part), this all would have come crashing to a head 5 years ago. Bush inherited this maelstrom from Xlinton. He could have chosen to oppose it head on, and had an even more bitter, deep, recession, then possibly lost both midterm and '04 elections ("It's the economy, stupid"-James Carville). Or, as he did, take the path of continuing the Xlinton policies...hoping to just ride the tiger.

Power for the simple sake of power is a rather lame basis for asking for our continued support, however, and the true conservatives have had just about all the excuses we can take. The Meiers nomination was the last straw. No more CAFTA, No more NAFTA, and no more FTAA frauds. Ron Paul and Phyllis Schlafly were always right. Those 'laws' (they are not treaties) are blatantly unconstitutional. Not to mention wrong-headed.

[Paul Ross]

The northern delegates along with Jefferson may have had objections to slavery but it did not get in the way of their politics.

Sorry right back at you.

Never said they didn't. I said they were a temporary compromise. And I note that you neglect to apprehend the real meaning of the Constitution's slave trade termination provisions...

And since you raise the Declaration as an side-issue: What the Declaration enunciated clearly however, were principles which were manifestly contradictory of the peculiar institution:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "My point is anyone can make it if they're willing to work hard."

Absolutely!

Others have made the point that the days of union-backed secure lifetime jobs (sinecures?) are gone.

OK.

Others point out that the economy is strong. Yes, it is!

The recovery started in Nov., 2001 and about 18 months ago it started performing like a classic recovery. Great! Though reply #71 (not mine) raises valid questions about the numbers given changes made in the "feel good" Clinton years.

Others say that MSM bias and the dopes who believe them are the problem.

Fine.

Others say that if we still worry we're just tinfoil-hat stupid. Reporting for duty.

Others simply demand that the discussion be limited to the guys in the posted article.

Here's a hint why some of us worry despite all. Here is a conclusion of one study:

"The number of new immigrant employed who came into the U.S. between 2001 and 2003 was estimated to be somewhere between 1.7 and 1.9 million in 2003 while the number of employed native born and established immigrants fell by more than one million between 2000 and 2003."

The study does not separate legal and ILLEGAL immigrants. The study is by the Center for Labor Market Studies Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts. Similar studies were released over the past couple of years by Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies.

This one, "New Immigrants in the Labor Force and the Number of Employed New Immigrants in the U.S. from 2000 through 2003: Continued Growth Amidst Declining Employment Among the Native Born Population", is at

http://www.nupr.neu.edu/01-04/immigration_jan.pdf

"Cheap," taxpayer-subsidized labor by the millions and more millions on the way plus demands to take the limits off H1B, L-1, etc.

Offshore outsourcing subsidized by cheap, taxpayer-backed risk insurance for corporations.

IMO that's what it's about. Our critics can say just work hard, avoid unions, don't fall for MSM doom and gloom, smile and be happy; it's just economics. Ok, but too much of it just might not be good for the Country.

[ladyjane]

401k's are the only way to go. Who knows what companies are going to be solvent 20 years from now. They're supposed to protect workers' pensions but many of them don't. 401k's are safer.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Some of these fossils you're arguing with haven't held a job in twenty-years.

You probably shouldn't use the words "hold" and "job" when you're talking to Havoc.

[Casloy]

I never said non union workers were better than union workers. I don't think a Union worker is any better than non union worker. On the other hand, there is nothing that makes a union worker better than non-union and yet they get a higher salary simply based on their ability to shut down a plan and demand more pay. When I was 18 I found a job doing manual labor on a construction site. The job foreman told me I needed two things, a pair of boots and a union card. I got the boots but when I went to the union office I was laughed out of there. There was a roomful of union workers sitting around waiting for jobs, and I was told they would get preference for any job since they had seniority. I never got that job. I am anti union, of that there is no doubt. I have seen our schools decay remarkeably since the advent of the National Education Association which fights any effort to pass voucher legislation simply to protect their own jobs. The list of Union efforts to undermine progress in this country is endless. The only place Unions can maintain their power anymore is in the government sector since they can get the Dems to cowtow to them in order to get their money and support. In the private sector they are an outdated, useless institution.

[Paul Ross]

I never got that job. I am anti union, of that there is no doubt.

Hence, a personal animus. One that may blind you to the larger concerns.

That being said, your points on the NEA are completely valid. Go get 'em tiger. We have an extensive organization here in Minnesota attempting to grapple with the NEA and its state progeny. While there are legitimate reasons for labor organization in history...obviously they don't apply to governmental service however. They represent a perversion in a democracy, where the taxpayer is extorted.

[durasell]

You would also eliminate police and fire fighter unions?

[Paul Ross]

You're welcome.

Yeah, the Chi-Comm's are long-winded, but that's the way these honchos are over there. Nobody dares tell the big-wigs to get off the stage... Anyways, the main reason for the length is so that he can explain a complete ideological road-map for their officer corps. Explaining all their general positions, in relation to a covert total war against the U.S., so that China can catch us by surprise, and propel itself to supremacy, using any and all means. And within the near term, not some indefinitely distant future. Chi Haotian talks in terms of having to execute their plan within 5 years...

If you notice, the Free Trader dupes run for the hills when the Chi-Comms are faithfully quoted.

In celebration of the New Year, here is a choice selection from comrade general Chi Haotian, needing to be highlighted:

"To resolve the issue of America we must be able to transcend conventions and restrictions. In history, when a country defeated another country or occupied another country, it could not kill all the people in the conquered land, because back then you could not kill people effectively with sabers or long spears, or even with rifles or machine guns. Therefore, it was impossible to gain a stretch of land without keeping the people on that land. However, if we conquered America in this fashion, we would not be able to make many people migrate there. Only by using special means to "“clean up"” America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us. This is not a matter of whether we are willing to do it or not. What kind of special means is there available for us to "“clean up"” America? Conventional weapons such as fighters, canons, missiles and battleships won"’t do; neither will highly destructive weapons such as nuclear weapons. We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons, despite the fact that we have been exclaiming that we will have the Taiwan issue resolved at whatever cost. Only by using non-destructive weapons that can kill many people will we be able to reserve America for ourselves. There has been rapid development of modern biological technology, and new bio weapons have been invented one after another. Of course we have not been idle; in the past years we have seized the opportunity to master weapons of this kind. We are capable of achieving our purpose of "“cleaning up"” America all of a sudden. When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. From a humanitarian perspective, we should issue a warning to the American people and persuade them to leave America and leave the land they have lived in to the Chinese people. Or at least they should leave half of the United States to be China"’s colony, because America was first discovered by the Chinese. But would this work? If this strategy does not work, then there is only one choice left to us. That is, use decisive means to "“clean up"” America, and reserve America for our use in a moment. Our historical experience has proven that as long as we make it happen, nobody in the world can do anything about us. Furthermore, if the United States as the leader is gone, then other enemies have to surrender to us.

A warm fuzzy picture of Haotian with Putin.

[Casloy]

Then apparently we agree on something.

[Paul Ross]

You would also eliminate police and fire fighter unions?

I personally have no gripe with those, although if they proved to be extortionary, then it seems the general rule would apply. I am not dogmatic about it. I tend to look at it on a case by case basis.

[Foundahardheadedwoman]

The deed is done. Move on. I didn't think it could happen in this country but it did. The folks who think this stuff is great just aint got their ox gored yet.