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Are Workers Trading Down ?
The Portland Tribune ^ | 7/22/2010 | Steve Law

Posted on 07/23/2010 3:37:45 PM PDT by ex-Texan

Retraining can’t keep up with flood of jobs lost overseas?

Those who preach the gospel of free trade say it will lift the whole world’s economy, from rich nations to poor.

And, they say, if American workers lose jobs to workers overseas or cheap imports, they can get retraining — courtesy of the federal Trade Act — to learn higher-skilled jobs for the 21st Century.

Forty-year-old Daryl Payne lost a production technician job at Daimler Trucks on Swan Island when the German company shifted manufacturing to Mexico. Uncle Sam is now paying him to learn how to be a water-treatment technician.

Lake Oswego resident Mitch Besser, 48, lost his job as a software engineer for a Nevada casino company when it shifted operations to Beijing. Now, he hopes the government retraining program will pay him to study bioinformatics at Oregon Health & Science University.

Trade Act benefits are a lifeline for displaced workers at a time when replacement jobs are scarce.

“The economy is going to be turning around eventually,” says Bob Tackett, executive secretary-treasurer of the Northwest Labor Council in Portland. “This is a good time to train yourself up.”

But even supporters of the program say it’s not enough to offset the jobs being lost as Oregon’s manufacturing and high-tech base is dismantled due to free-trade pacts.

“This is just a Band-Aid on a large wound,” Tackett says.

In the past year, the U.S. Labor Department certified 10,902 Oregon workers as eligible for retraining and other Trade Adjustment Assistance because they lost jobs due to free-trade pacts, according to data compiled by the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign. The campaign’s director, Arthur Stamoulis, says those lost jobs are evidence that unfair trade policies, not just a sour economy, are partly to blame for Oregon’s stubbornly high unemployment.

If the sole reason for Oregon’s huge job losses is the recession, says Greg Pallesen, vice president of Portland-based Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers, then why is China booming right now?

In some ways, Pallesen says, the Trade Act was designed to mollify Congressional and citizen fears that free-trade policies would sacrifice too many American jobs. “It sounds terrible, but I almost believe this country would have been better off if the Trade Act had never passed.”

Benefits expanded

The Trade Act of 1974 was designed to help retrain blue-collar manufacturing workers displaced by competition from cheap imports. The program was expanded in 2002 — timed with the new North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA — to aid workers whose jobs were shipped overseas. The program was expanded again last year to include white-collar and service workers.

“It’s a great program,” Daryl Payne says. Workers can get extended unemployment benefits, health insurance subsidies and two years’ tuition for retraining if the Oregon Employment Department finds there are available jobs in the worker’s chosen new field.

But now, even stalwart Portland-area employers such as Tektronix, the granddaddy of the local technology sector, are shipping jobs overseas. That raises a troubling question for area workers and young adults pondering their future education: Just what is a secure job to shoot for these days? There’ll always be toilets

As Payne notes, even X-rays are being sent to India so lower-paid X-ray technicians can interpret them.

But he figures you can’t offshore toilets, and local workers always will be needed in the water treatment field. So he enrolled in a two-year program at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City to learn a new trade.

Payne worked 15 years for Daimler as a production technician and doing quality assurance on the truck assembly line. He was laid off in early 2009, and got temporary work counseling fellow laid-off workers about Trade Act benefits.

Of 180 workers laid off in his group, only 85 signed up for any Trade Act benefits, Payne says. Of those, at least 40 sought retraining benefits, though some left their studies when Daimler called them back to their jobs. Program’s limits

Many displaced workers don’t even bother to come to orientation meetings to learn about Trade Act benefits. “They’re mad at the world,” says Mark Warne, who helps link workers to the program as a work force liaison for the Oregon AFL-CIO labor federation in Portland.

Some workers can’t afford to live on unemployment insurance while going back to school, even if the government pays their tuition and 80 percent of health insurance benefits. That’s not enough to make house payments and pay children’s college tuition, especially if their spouse isn’t working, Warne says.

“A lot of them are intimidated about going back to school,” especially older workers, Pallesen says.

Some Daimler workers were tripped up by federal and health insurance paperwork issues, Payne says, and were denied benefits.

And the federal government is sometimes slow to certify that laid-off workers lost their jobs due to trade pacts. It took 18 months for workers at Weyerhaeuser’s Albany trucking division to qualify for benefits, Warne says. By then, many had moved on.

Some companies resist filing for Trade Act benefits for their laid-off workers. “A lot of companies don’t want anything to do with it,” says Tackett, who previously had Warne’s job. Unions or a minimum of three workers at an affected work site can file for benefits, but it takes longer without the employer’s cooperation.

Payne figures he’ll make out better than most of his peers. He couldn’t handle going to college while he was working full time, but now has time to focus on his studies.

He’s noticing that three or four job openings crop up each month in his intended new field. Though there are 50 to 80 applicants for each job, he’s confident about his prospects.

No job is safe

Mitch Besser, 48, who lives with his wife in Lake Oswego, has a master’s degree in software design and engineering, but still was out of work for two years. So in 2008, he secured a weekday apartment in Corvallis to take a job there with Reno-based International Gaming Technology, doing computer networking for slot machines. Besser earned $90,000, but knew it was short-lived when the company brought in workers from China to be trained on how to do his job.

He was laid off in late-June and the operation was shifted to Beijing, where, he notes, casino gambling is illegal.

The typical argument of free-trade boosters, Besser says, is that the U.S. can afford to lose lower-skilled jobs overseas and focus on higher-skilled work here.

“I think it’s a complete lie,” he says. “Anyone’s job can be moved.”

A 2007 academic paper by Princeton economist Alan Blinder found that many jobs requiring college education are the most vulnerable to being shipped overseas in future years. Among his list of “highly offshorable” jobs are mathematicians, film and video editors, economists and authors.

As Besser weighs possible training opportunities, he doesn’t think technology jobs are a safe bet any more.

“I have thought about other fields that are less likely to be outsourced,” he says. “I have no idea how to avoid that, honestly.”

Living on the edge

Sergio Menor, 48, couldn’t find work for six months after he was laid off from Daimler last fall. So he enrolled in a two-year renewable energy program at Portland Community College.

The Trade Act helps, Menor says, but it’s still tough paying the bills. His wife has work as a medical insurance technician in Portland, but they own a home in Clackamas and have two young sons to support. His wife cashed in her 401(k), and the couple has run up big credit card debts.

“Sometimes we miss our payments for the house, and the utility bills,” Menor says.

When he’s done with the two-year program, he thinks the only company hiring is Vestas, a Danish wind-energy company with regional headquarters in Portland.

Menor immigrated here from the Philippines in 1993 to get a better life. Now, it seems, many local jobs are going back to Asia. Upside of free trade

Portland economist Joe Cortright and others point out that free-trade pacts are a boon for local employers competing well internationally, including the state’s largest locally based company, Nike, and Oregon’s largest private employer, Intel.

Consumers and businesses also enjoy cheaper prices on a host of imported goods.

“Oregon is a major exporter, being on the coast and near growing Asian markets. We gain from that,” says Nick Beleiciks, state employment economist for the Oregon Employment Department. Some of the same companies that lost jobs due to free-trade pacts might gain jobs in other units, he notes.

However, it’s not clear if Oregon has gained more jobs than it has lost due to trade pacts, Beleiciks says. The big fear when the U.S. endorsed NAFTA and other free-trade agreements was the loss of manufacturing jobs, and that has occurred, he says.

When the Great Recession gripped Oregon in July 2008, the state had 143,100 manufacturing jobs in durable goods — a category that includes trucks, other transportation, computers, computer components, metals, electronic instruments and wood products. Two years later, those jobs are down to 113,500, a drop of 29,600.

Since last October, 2,979 Oregonians filed to get new Trade Act benefits, including 696 from Portland’s tri-county-area, says David Allen, Trade Act program analyst for the Oregon Employment Department, which administers the benefits.

Usually only about half the Oregon workers displaced by trade policies seek some form of Trade Adjustment Assistance, such as extended unemployment insurance, Allen says. Among those, roughly 30 percent enroll in retraining programs, he estimates. That translates into one in seven affected workers.

A 2006 federal study found that most workers who do take retraining benefits get lower pay in their new jobs. Oregon workers using Trade Act benefits in fiscal year 2007-08 earned the equivalent of $31,000 average salaries after leaving the program, according to the Department of Labor. Denied benefits

Southeast Portland resident Steve Keller, 44, would love to get those training benefits, to become a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technician. He lost his job last year at Innovion Corp., a Gresham chip plant. But the Labor Department denied a petition to rule the layoffs were due to trade policies, Keller says. He’s puzzled by that, since workers at the company’s sister plant in Arizona did get Trade Act benefits when their plant closed for similar reasons.

So now Keller is job hunting like crazy, and can’t afford to get retrained. He’s unsure what jobs to pursue, and which ones are safe from being sent overseas.

“I think about it every day,” Keller says. “I don’t have a clue.”

Where Jobs Were Lost


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: economy; nwo; worldtrade
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To: razorback-bert

sounds like a fancy title for a claims examiner=pays the insurance claim


121 posted on 07/23/2010 11:05:52 PM PDT by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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To: Tolsti2
You might find this interesting reading, The Emergence of the Service Economy: Fact or Artifact?

It was written over ten years ago regarding the service economy. I find it pertinent today to our current discussions. A very interesting look into what we thought then and what we have now. It appears to me that Adam Smith was more correct than Richard B. McKenzie.

I also find it interesting that "conservatives" attempt to classify businesses as traitors or unpatriotic. Businesses are no such things and cannot be such things. Assigning anthropomorphic attributes to business is illogical.

I find no reason for business to remain in a place that is economically hostile to its own existence. Some on this very thread are supporting trade barriers and tariffs. Why? Those solutions are only temporary.

Until the American worker is willing to comprehend who their competition is, how their ability to compete has been crushed by their own government policies and special interests, we will not have the industrious American return to our country.

I shake my head in disbelief at some who say we need to force China to pay their workers more etc. Who are we to hold that "gun" to China's head? Really are we not just espousing the very Progressive Agenda we claim to be against here? China business is bad and needs to redistribute its wealth? Isn't that what we're saying and ultimately trying to force?

Conversely the voices that seek to demand I buy the higher priced American goods, for what reason? The claim is to protect American jobs? At what price? My freedom and the Progressive Unions ability to redistribute my wealth at both the point of purchase and now as "special interest taxes" in Washington, DC? Am I unpatriotic to refuse to buy such goods? Am I really a traitor for refusing to support the Progressive Agenda. This returns me to my first point...

American workers don't know how to compete on a global scale. In fact, most manufacturing workers if unionized refuse to compete. And then shake their heads in amazement and fists in anger as their jobs go overseas.

This is not the fault of business. It is the fault of the democrats, unions, liberals, progressives, and environmentalists. It is the direct result of their policies for which we have today's "service economy."

122 posted on 07/24/2010 4:47:03 AM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: EBH

Elsewhere it was reported that only 12% of manufacturing is unionized. If that’s the case, it’s a huge red herring. I just don’t understand the concept of giving companies such a free pass but attacking everyone from government to unions to people wanting to live a middle class life. But ok, go for it.


123 posted on 07/24/2010 5:01:06 AM PDT by Tolsti2
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To: Tolsti2
The figure you quote is from now, not then. In 1983 when unions made up 20% of the workforce employee, OSHA and the EPA were coming into existence as well. There were and still are many pressures forcing manufacturing business out of the hostile American environment. This downward spiral has been going on for several decades fueled by all the reasons I sighted.

Perhaps even now an article like this, Union Membership Rises, but Quality of Jobs Has Changed , might open your eyes a bit more...maybe not, but when one considers even our service jobs are outsourced to India...unions are but one part of the problem and the American worker to their own detriment continues to refuse to actively compete for those jobs. The unions did nothing to protect the manufacturing worker's job. And now they are doing what to the service worker's jobs?

But...go on and hold your beliefs as whole new sectors leave the country. Blame big bad business all you want. Sooner or later, hopefully sooner, one must realize why one is alone on that dance floor and the dance hall is empty.

124 posted on 07/24/2010 5:21:12 AM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: Tolsti2

PS...

Note in the article

that 12% is likely to be low-paid service workers these days.

Unions have failed America and the American worker.


125 posted on 07/24/2010 5:32:31 AM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: EBH

“I also find it interesting that “conservatives” attempt to classify businesses as traitors or unpatriotic. Businesses are no such things and cannot be such things. Assigning anthropomorphic attributes to business is illogical.”

-

That right there, is the “conservative” excuse-making which is going to destroy our beloved nation.

Businesses are people. Specifically, the owners and management of those businesses are - people.

If they feel above such mundane concepts are PATRIOTISM, then don’t be surprized when be as a nation decide, they have none.

Let them then explain to the Chinese Communist Party, how in fact those businesses’ factories and technology, which those businesses have moved to some sprawling “joint venture” complex outside Shanghai. 51% owned by the PLA.

In theory, belongs to the business. Not to the Chinese Communist Party.

As they nationalize it.

Then what? The business management abandon America. Where they were born and thrived.

Move to a nation without law or protections.

Screwing the American people in the process.

Then. Will no doubt be the first ones complaining when their business is taken over.

Because that is EXACTLY the next step.

China is offering all that cheap labor.

In exchange for becoming the new owners...

That’s the fact, which no otherwise patriotic, sensible “conservatives” seems to have yet grasped.

China is not captilalist.

Communist China, is intent on taking everything from us. Is remarkably doing so, with the *help* of alleged “conservatives”.

It is hardly “conservative”, to help them do that.


126 posted on 07/24/2010 5:51:39 AM PDT by Cringing Negativism Network (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1fDL7x1Sg)
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To: EBH

I share the blame around, there’s plenty to go. I don’t care for unions one bit. I’m getting a sour taste for business in general lately as well. Neither side has any exclusive rights on sucking.


127 posted on 07/24/2010 6:00:48 AM PDT by Tolsti2
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To: Cringing Negativism Network

In a sense what these countries are doing is similar to market dumping, which is normally illegal. They’re doing it with labor though, so everyone looks the other way while they can get some cash out of it.


128 posted on 07/24/2010 6:03:19 AM PDT by Tolsti2
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To: ex-Texan

Unemployment is coming to Bangladesh....

I went to look at some equipment Thursday at a closed down cotton mill. The equipment is a fully automated mill that takes cotton in bales on one end and outputs yarn for T Shirts on the other.

The mill was state of the art in 1992 and when closed in May, operated with a minimum of people. The mill is being disassembled and shipped to various mills in Bangladesh.

The labor saving machinery will mean loss of jobs for Bangladeshi’s in the existing mills.


129 posted on 07/24/2010 6:20:01 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... The winds of war are freshening)
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To: Cringing Negativism Network
That’s the fact, which no otherwise patriotic, sensible “conservatives” seems to have yet grasped.

Oh...I think we all grasp it. But until we address the issues of the hostile business environment here in America, we will continue to fail to map out a successful strategy.

Consider the drilling ban moratorium issued by 0bama alone. It really was nothing more than harassment by the government. We knew/know that such a ban will do what to our American workers?

So you think business should stay here and waste time, energy, and resources being what you consider a patriotic attempt to continue to do business? I guess that $5 or more gasoline is OK for you? Your expectation of how business should do business in America is illogical. You are looking to the wrong place for your hero to save America.

130 posted on 07/24/2010 6:20:22 AM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: Tolsti2

I would think it is because of the “Indian Adolf Hitler” scenario; they know Americans are disgusted by the obvious tight relationship between the US and Red China (despite all of the news detailing how they enslave and suppress their own people), and they’d like to keep those relationships as low-key as possible. Also, ANY Indian government has us over a barrel as our dependence on tech workers in India itself grows; we’d rather convert them to Americans here.


131 posted on 07/24/2010 7:00:44 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: anglian

They’ve tried that here in NJ (raising taxes); it drove off even more businesses and wealthy individuals. Governor Christie is trying to slow the bleeding, but has been tarred & feathered for it. However it ends up (he doesn’t seem to mind that he’ll be targeted by a massive public sector and numerous socially liberal groups come re-election time), he has already publicized an often un-discussed problem by exposing just how much more they earn than private sector employees (despite all of the mass media claims to the contrary). Here in NJ our public sector employees have become the new upper class (since all our financial jobs went to Mumbai and Manila), and more and more of the true working class (as well as the remnants of the former upper class) are fleeing the costs of supporting them and their bloated benefits/retirement plans.


132 posted on 07/24/2010 7:00:48 AM PDT by kearnyirish2
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To: EBH
Also note that, in the portion of the press release I posted, Daimler is moving as its union contracts expire. How much of a factor did unions play in its decision? No one knows. But it seems odd to dismiss it altogether on this thread.
133 posted on 07/24/2010 8:41:23 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

100% should do it. Because government knows best. Just ask Dennis.


134 posted on 07/24/2010 2:04:32 PM PDT by Toddsterpatriot (Math is hard. Harder if you're stupid.)
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To: 1rudeboy

Oh there is much that should not be dismissed on this thread. In fact I think the whole discussion on this thread is very, very revealing.

Daimler moving as a union contract expires...

The article I posted indicates that the unions are no longer the safe haven of the skilled worker. In fact, they are recruiting the unskilled low-wage workers...who will foot the bills for those that came before them. I can’t even imagine what lies they are being told, building on the old glory of the union past.

If you want to see the future of America...really look at the failure of the unions. So now they work on jobs that can’t be outsourced like...teachers.

And let us not forget what happened to Andy Stern, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2530707/posts

Any conservative who is still willing to wave the flag for a union is not a patriot. They have become the tool of the regime. Funny how some of those words echo on this very thread.


135 posted on 07/24/2010 4:51:39 PM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: EBH
Compare the following two selections:

If there’s no jobs but stuff is cheap to make in general, I don’t see any way for there not to be some sort of serious issues coming up. It’ll be a tiny ultra wealthy on top with an unbelievable sized lower class and no middle.
The lowers aren’t going to eat grass for all that long.

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.

Which one appears on this thread, and which belongs to Karl Marx?
136 posted on 07/24/2010 5:04:42 PM PDT by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

To burden foreign corn with protective duties is infamous, it is to speculate on the hunger of the people.


137 posted on 07/24/2010 5:20:13 PM PDT by EBH (Our First Right...."it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,")
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To: EBH
You are exactly right. The US leftist disease drove business away, and thats the most powerful driver. As we speak, oil Companies are moving teir offices off shore out of Dalas Fort Wrrth to carribean havens and soon the jobs in Texas will go elsewhere. Oil companies just can't flourish in the unstablr environment created by leftists, th EPA, the politicsof failure on US energy policy. They are moving to where there is some sanity in government, where idiots likeelossi couldnot possibly drive politics.

Can't say as I blame them much, but it hurts the American people big time. The failure is in the hands of the left. Soon they will have no tax base left from this evolution, which is the exact moment they will try to take over private citizen investment and savings.They have already discussed in committee how they need to protect Roth accounts ant IRAs from alegedly unscrupulous hedge funds who supervise them ( TIAA CREF??), saying their tax lien on such funds justifies government taking them and 'investing ' them.

A big bang is approaching, Americans will not take much more.

138 posted on 07/24/2010 8:54:33 PM PDT by Candor7 (Obama .......yes.......is fascist... ..He meets every diagnostic of history.)
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