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.
"And your stand on free speach is duly noted."
So is your stand on free association.
"If you don't like what someone says, you'd be willing to fire them to try and shut them up."
If someone routinely defames me, am I required to employ them?
I don't intend to shut you up. I just intend to quit employing you, assuming that I do.
Go work for someone else. And, perhaps, you should refrain from insulting and defaming your next employer.
For "treason lobby" phrase to work, people wouold have to know of whom you apply this term to, what it entailed, and why this lobby is out to destroy America.
The funny thing is, that you and I probably agree,to one level or another, on many of the issues at hand, but your default posistion of attacking anyone who suggests that Unions are all but blemsih free, leaves little room for rational discussion.
Best of luck in your career pursuits.
Whether treason is a serious, vile crime or not doesn't set aside what can amount to treason. I think Lincoln deported people for subversive speach because it amounted to treason. Subversive speach may sound puny; but, it was vile enough to be treason. What is vile in it isn't how it sounds or looks. It is in it's impact that it is judged. One can say something vile and not be a traitor. But, one can say something seemingly harmless, subvert the moral of the country and it's will, and be a traitor in the doing. You understand the words, you just don't seem to understand how to apply the mechanics. The vileness is not it's sound or appearance. It is in it's impact.
Free trade is subverting our economy. Wages are falling, benefits are being slashed, hours slashed, businesses are folding or leaving due to the outside competition. And the competition, by it's nature, must leave us in the worse condition because there is far more cheap labor to be had overseas than there are US citizens by many multiples. If supply and demand determines an increase in pay over time, how many Billions of chinese people must be employed before you incur a shortage of labor at 10% of our minimum wage or less.. Right. Sounds much like the debate on importation of Corn to Britain.. "This will be great, you'll be unharmed.. (till your wages and benefits disappear and you are forced out of work..) ..wages will go up (in our estimates only).." What, praytell, do you think is more vile, more subversive, more destructive to the average American than putting their livelyhoods at risk or garauteeing it's destruction for no cause more than a politician's willing hand toward the greed of his buddies. People can deal with and understand buggywhips and the like. Hending their job to pedro because business and politicians want to purposedly undermine the wage here - that tends to tick people off in rather extreme ways. I'm sure, however, this would not be "vile" to you. You would likely dismiss it as "breaking a few million eggs" - nothing to trouble one's head over.. How insane of those people to be upset. Why should ruining people for your good upset anyone?...
This from the very business mogul who thinks a company can be successful by paying more for labor, more for benefits, and more for retirement than the competition? Just how do you suppose that is going to work out?
Maybe you are suggesting that these overly expensive business practices will simply be offset by overly expensive consumer pricing or overly expensive tax supports?
You still cannot grasp the concept. Study what happened to the Soviet economy when they tried to isolate themselves from the global market and protect their citizens from unfair capitalist trade practices. You might also review the situation in Cuba, where they have still failed to see the light.
Goofy indeed. Educate yourself in Economics 101. Study the differences between a free market and a controlled economy. Analyze the real-world examples of each.
Irrelevant. The two must meet or nothing happens - period. Both must exist or neither is relevant - period. You can gainsay it all you want; but, that is the essential fact.
I never said Unions were blemish free. I'm just not allowing that Unions are to blame when you have not established that to be the case and when it is absurd on it's face. How about if I try to get you to agree that free trade is about union busting? I don't think it is though it will be a side effect that is unavoidable. Present an argument of worth. So far you have not. You merely want me to assume your right without presenting anything that would make that assumption seem reasonable, much less correct.
I have noted that Chinese labor is far cheaper than our legal minimum wage and cheaper even than our legal tipped wage rate which is less than half the normal minimum if memory serves. It's one thing to seek cheap labor. One can bust unions without subverting the entire US economy to do so. Harder still to imagine is how non-union offshoring could be the proximate cause of Unions. If one were rebelling against union wages, one would expect companies that are union shops to be the ones doing it - pretty exclusively and from the outset. You haven't shown that to be the case and I can and have provided names of offshoring companies that are non-union and are driving the competition to offshore. Saying it's so doesn't make it so. And I'm not going to assume you're right just because you want agreement without proof.
A consumer will always exist a product has to made or harvested first.
"""Irrelevant. The two must meet or nothing happens - period. Both must exist or neither is relevant - period. You can gainsay it all you want; but, that is the essential fact."""
Again you are confusing what I am saying. I never said you can have one without the other. The point is that the consumer is the one that the producer needs to separate the money from. The consumer dicides if he/she is willing to buy said item. The comsumer is the one who puts the money into the economy only after buying a product.
My point is IMO that the consumer does more to improve the economy by spending money, then a producer does by just making a product. Remember a consumer is really another word for a person that will buy a product. A consumer may not be able to be called a consumer if he doesn't buy a product but he still has the money that the economy needs. The product doesn't do anything for the economy unless some gives someone else(another consumer)money.
New York Transit strike http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543903/posts
1000's at Delphi retire early ar GM's expense
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1512485/posts
Boing Halt's production after strike
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475833/posts
GM Presses UAW for Health-Care Deal http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1502308/posts
Big Dig crane and backhoe operators caught snoozing, reading and joy riding are paid about $102,000 a year, according to prevailing wage rates. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1496226/posts
Longshoremen accused of slowdown in west. Average $100,000-120,000/yr
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/775773/posts
Unions work hard to create a divisive atomosphere between employee/employer. You should read my roommates TWU newsletter, and then tell me I should be all for Unions.
Unions and Politics- most Unions give to democrats and support the worst of liberal aggendas.
The NEA gives 65 Million to liberal cuases http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1550951/posts
NEA Annual meeting.
Consider the first 10 agenda items from the NEA’s recent national meeting (brought to my attention courtesy of blogger Captain’s Quarters):
1) [No description] — defeated
2) Participate in a union-funded anti-Wal-Mart publicity campaign — adopted
3) Investigate financial firms that support private Social Security accounts — adopted
4) Add "other" and "multi-ethnic" to all forms asking about ethnicity — adopted
5) Commemorate a 1966 NEA merger — adopted
6) Form a coalition to preserve the status quo on Social Security policy — adopted
7) Inform members about the niceties of different pension plans — adopted
8) Publish an article on the purported ill effects of perfume — adopted
9) Provide funds for air quality seminars — adopted
10) Form a work group on health care issues — adopted
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1442338/posts
AFL-CIO spending on politcal advertising and PACs
http://www.nrtw.org/d/political_spending.htm
Unions are not the only problem causing off shoring/out sourcing. Here is a post I made from a Ford topic.
"Well, this is a multifaceted problem, our labor costs overall are too high. Base wages + medical beni's + OSHA + EPA + legal, etc. all add up to a major expense per employee. It is difficult to keep pace with China and Mexico, but we can if we stop artificial wage increases, implement massive tort reform and privatize Medicare/aid to lower medical costs, and encourage our citizens to get a good education we can tie off this bleeding, but at the current rate, we will be a service only economy."
Still looking for impartial numbers, etc.
A GAO Nov., 2005 report on offshoring included four impact issues:
* The average U.S. standard of living
* Employment and job loss
* Distribution of income
* Security and consumer privacy
Basically on each issue the study feels strongly both ways. Once again we need that one-armed economist Harry Truman sought in vain:
Offshoring will benefit U.S. living standards -- on the other hand. . . .
"Offshoring.of Services. An Overview of the Issues." GAO November, 2005
How to deal with it (policy)?
* Proposals to improve U.S. global competitiveness
* Proposals to address effects on the workforce
* Proposals to enhance security
* Proposals to reduce the extent of offshoring
An interesting note from proposals to deal with effects on the workforce. To wit, a "wage insurance program to replace a portion of wages at reemployment for workers who experience wage declines after displacement."
Hey! Why not? Corporations get taxpayer-backed cheap risk insurance and other goodies. Why not something for workers?
Wot?
Oh. Roght. That'd be socialism. :>)
The report is long but immediately makes it clear that "Determining appropriate policy responses to the offshoring phenomenon is especially challenging due to the limited state of knowledge about offshoring and its effects."
It also reminded me of something that is oft-overlooked, foregone job creation domestically.
But on to the GAO report's recommended Trade Adjustment Assistance program for displaced manufacturing workers and The Displaced Worker Survey part of the CPS where surely there are numbers -- gotta keep in mind one highly publicized government survey that was limited to mass layoffs that resulted from moving jobs "over there." I'm looking for all the numbers.
Just read down to your reply #17. I'm sure by now, you've been slammed for writing the simple truth. Obviously, you aren't one of the ones making big $$$$ with the "global" agenda.
Please run for office. Many of us who vote republican do so because of social issues and because the democrats have totally lost touch with common sense. If there were anyone with your views running for office, I'd do everything I could to get them elected.
If you go to prison for a felony you get full health coverage. It is one of the paradoxes of modern times that felons receive better helth care than many law abiding citizens.
The Displaced Worker Survey I mentioned above appears to be for just three years only (1998 - 2000).
The Trade Adjustment Assistance program for displaced manufacturing workers looks like it may be expanded to cover lost service sector jobs and will require the Department of Labor to start keeping accurate data on offshoring. I do not know the current status of the bill.
"Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAAIA) Improvement Act Oct. 27, [2005] which if passed would extend benefits to displaced service workers, including software programmers and other high-tech workers."
The original and later amendments to the TAA provides benefits for manufacturing workers whose jobs have been offshored.
"Smith’s bill would simplify the application process for wage insurance, increase the funding cap for job training programs, and enhance health care subsidies for displaced workers of all types.
"And it would strengthen data collection and reporting requirements by making it mandatory for the Department of Labor to track and make public data on both service sector and manufacturing job trends and TAA usage. By requiring data to be tracked, the bill addresses the problem that there is a lack of statistics about employment and offshoring numbers to enable lawmakers to consider policy decisions about limiting offshoring through caps or taxes."
(Above from Internet sources)
Lack of statistics about employment and offshoring numbers? The government not keeping statistics? Strange. Is that like the governmnment not enforcing immigration laws, not knowing just how man ILLEGALs are here? Accurate numbers would upset the public maybe?
Wage insurance, I like it. Why not? Corporations get cheap risk insurance for their offshore investments -- workers certainly have their own investments in their careers.
Appears to be no numbers available except from guessing and partisan sources; e.g., one IT professional source put the number of their jobs lost at near 700,000.
As for jobs lost to productivity increases I am highly suspect of any numbers because there is "imported productivity." Is it productivity enhancements here or offshoring?
Again, there was a government report released a couple of years ago that pro-offshoring folks jumped on to prove that few jobs were being sent offshore -- but the report counted only mass layoffs of 50 or more employees.
So I cannot answer your questions but the news is awash with story after story of jobs already transferred and plans to send literally hundreds of thousands more offshore.
Well, from my previous posts, manufacturing output up 40% between 1994 and 2000. With slightly lower manufacturing employment.
Again, there was a government report released a couple of years ago that pro-offshoring folks jumped on to prove that few jobs were being sent offshore -- but the report counted only mass layoffs of 50 or more employees.
Well, you could call all 100,000,000 households and ask, but it could take a while.
So I cannot answer your questions but the news is awash with story after story of jobs already transferred and plans to send literally hundreds of thousands more offshore.
Yeah, I see Willie Green's posts too. And we still created 2 million net new jobs in the last 12 months.
Neither exist for the benefit of the other. The employee continues to work for the corporation as long as he/she feels that the payment received is more valuable than the service rendered, and the employer feels the converse is true. Just like when you buy gas for your vehicle, you feel the 22 miles you will be able to travel are more valuable than the $2.25 you paid for the gallon of gas. The retailer feels the converse is true. The framers saw the inherent wisdom in this concept of Win/Win and attempted to secure it with the right of individuals to make contracts. The government has subsequently subverted this in the blue states by dictating certain jobs be union jobs.
We need a good national candidate to address this if pubs and dims will not. Politicians are supposed to be our servants, not our bosses - telling us how it's gonna be. When a servant does that, you fire them. Plain and simple. When they deliberately undermine you, you fire them and give them the what for. And it's about time all of them on all sides learned that.
Yep, and you have your "honorable gentlemen" on the hill largely to thank for that absurdity.
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