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.
"As for your attempts at verbal abuse as an excuse for argumentation."
I will explain this to you exactly once.
Calling someone you disagree with a member of the "treason lobby" is verbal abuse. If you dislike being repaid in that coin, please quit tendering it yourself. Do I make myself clear?
I did. You can have a female that doesn't need a male or a male that doesn't need a female. That doesn't stop them from getting married. You're trying to engage in a chicken and egg discussion and are apparently too blind to see it. Without a consumer to buy a product, there is no use for the product. But, if there is no product to sell, the very definition of "consurmer" becomes moot. Neither can exist without the other. They are thusly mutually beneficial and neither is superior to the other. You fail to grasp the fact that people don't *need* to be married per se. Some just want to be. Consumers don't necessarily *need* a product. Some just want it. Ive you've ever been in a relationship, you'd understand that they are more complex than you're giving credit for. And you've way oversimplified the relationship to make a point that isn't leant to by your comparison.
BTW, since when is a marriage two people with the same intentions? The only common intent is being together and possibly having children. Few share the same aspirations. Most don't even share the same occupation. They may have commonality; but, the extent of that commonality is variable as to type and degree. Some people get married just because they can talk to one another. As simple as that may seem, it's pretty important.
I don't recall yanking your chain.
Sorry. Sometimes I can't resist cracking wise. It is one of my more endearing traits, which gives you an idea of where the other traits fall on the scale...
It isn't verbal abuse, it's linguistically accurate. Treason lobby references people committing what is, dictionary definition - treason. Are we supposed to stop calling people who steal "thieves" because it might offend them? Or do we use the word because it is proper to it's definition. Never ceases to amaze how people want to devolve language when they're made uncomfortable by accuracy.
You certainly don't.
Don't use accurate terminology, it might upset him.
726
There you go again. Projecting your shortcomings on others. Typical. Figure out the difference between mean and median yet? LOL!!
Treason
1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family
Nothing here about buying a foreign product. Or cutting loose a whiny low skilled American employee.
What's that, your current hourly wage?
I just pointed it out because I'm not gonna waste my time responding to your nonsense. If you want to waste your own time, have at it. You can't argue the topic of the ongoing exchange and have to resort to using the liberal playbook. It's an admittance of a losing position. Why should I waste time with someone who's already admitted defeat..
That's right, you should be using your skills to save million dollar a minute computer networks. ROFLMAO!!
"Treason lobby references people committing what is, dictionary definition - treason."
Firing you from your job is NOT treason; it is eminently sound business practice. I sincerely doubt that you could actually give the proper definition of treason under the Constitution.
BTW, I wonder if you work for one of the convenience stores I own. If I find that you do . . . well, you won't be working there for very long.
Niether or both. They are not mutually exclusive. Profit cannot exist without a product and a consumer. Both must be there. A consumer with no product does nothing to grow the economy. A product with no consumer does nothing to grow the economy. They both contribute or neither does. That *is* the point. Just as in a marriage - if one or the other isn't there to support it, both end up divorced.. from each other. Thus neither can ever be more important or have a "greater contribution" because neither can contribute alone.
My confusion was over the fact that most people consider treason to be a serious, vile, crime. For many years it was the only Federal capital offense. However, if you're saying that you meant no insult by saying my gang is the treason lobby, then I guess that's good.
I'm easy --what the heck, I'll go it your way. From now on I'll refer to the import taxers as "People Insulting Sane Society As Nazi Traitors" --or pissant for short.
I didn't equate firing me from my job as treason.. ever. Why do you suppose you thought you needed to make such a claim in pretense that it meant something to the argument. Perhaps because it mischaracterizes and confuses the discussion creating a fog behind which you wish to hide yourself from the inspection of others..
And your stand on free speach is duly noted. If you don't like what someone says, you'd be willing to fire them to try and shut them up. You're helping demonstrate my point - thank you.
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