Laid-Off Factory Workers Find Jobs Are Drying Up for Good

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Monday, July 21, 2003 | CLARE ANSBERRY

[TroutStalker]

BUTLER, Pa. -- The two Karenbauer brothers and their cousin, Danny Mottern, have worked alongside each other for much of their lives. Working with their hands comes naturally to all three. As young boys they were dispatched to feed the cows and plant corn on their grandfather's 134-acre farm.

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

"This situation is a real shame. I cannot help but feel sorry for these men, caught up in an economy which no longer needs their talents."

The current economic climate may not need them, but America does and will. The problem is with the policies that encourage and enable corporations to outsource blue and now white collar jobs to foreign countries where billions of people are willing to work for near slave wages.
We have a huge Trade Deficit that is growing thanks to the current policies. Congress needs to hear from us, that we are watching them and will vote accordingly.

[riri]

The potential violence that this will bring will make those gated communities very much unsafe

As most of the country knows next to nothing about history, I have to question if our humble leaders in congress know just as little? Do they not know that conditions such as this were the catalysts for most if not all of the great revolutions?

[KDD]

http://www.aksteel.com/news/press_release.asp?doc_id=112

According to the lawsuit, the following are among the other companies targeted by the USWA’s racketeering and corrupt practices since at least 1979:


National Metal Abrasive, Inc., Wadsworth, Ohio
RMI Titanium Company, Niles, Ohio
Kaiser Aluminum, Spokane, Washington
Demag Delaval Turbomachinery Corporation, Trenton, New Jersey
Southwire (NSA), Hawesville, Kentucky
Wheland Foundry, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Titan Tire, Des Moines, Iowa
Conti Construction Company, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Georgetown Steel, Georgetown, South Carolina
GST Steel Company, Kansas City, Missouri
Magnetic Specialties, Inc., Marietta, Ohio
WCI Steel, Inc., Warren, Ohio
Concord Steel, Warren, Ohio
Calex Corporation, Campbell, Ohio
Titanium Metals Corporation (TIMET), Henderson and Las Vegas, Nevada
Bayou Steel, La Place, Louisiana

Trinity Industries, Bessemer, Alabama

Lukens Steel Company, Coatesville, Pennsylvania
Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation, Ravenswood, West Virginia
Ideal Electric, Mansfield, Ohio
Hater Industries, Delhi, Ohio
LTV Aerospace and Defense Company, East Camden, Arkansas
Thomas Steel Corporation, Chicago, Illinois
Phelps Dodge Corporation, Morenci, Arizona
Jarl Extrusions, Inc., Elizabethon, Tennessee
Newport News Shipbuilding, Newport News, Virginia
Rocky Mountain Steel, Pueblo, Colorado
AK Steel, Mansfield, Ohio

[ex-snook]

Looks like the Army and homeland security will be the growth opportunities. If your parent served in Korea, you will be considered a legacy and get the first opening.

[upcountryhorseman]

Keep in mind that this is seasonal work. And the housing
industry may be starting to lag as interest rates start
to go up.

[Bon mots]

One thing articles like this always overlook are the costs imposed upon firms like this for having operations in America. Local property taxes for one, are a serious "punishment" for locating or maintaining a factory in an American city.

In an automated factory, wage differentials and indeed wage costs can amount so only some 10% of the cost of most industrial goods. The real killers are confiscatory taxation, regulation, insurance (cost of litigation and liability). Medical Insurance costs in the USA are another heartbreaker, Milton Friedman described this scam many years ago.

There are a lot of good reasons not to open a new factory in America. There are a lot of good reasons to move existing ones to less expensive locales, and wages are only one of the smaller considerations.

Remember, owners of factories run them to earn money, not to supply jobs, or tax revenues, or defendents for lawsuits...etc.

[Euro-American Scum]

Well they should be 'adding value' in a 'service industry', anyway...

Service industries have all been offshored to India. Haven't you heard?

[RDangerfield]

Just tell the whiners that the administration announced last week that the recession officially ended two years ago. And the economic indicators went up by a tenth of a point today. The economy is roaring again, right? We should all be happy, no whining. Praise the GOP, the friend of the working man.
--Raoul

[E Rocc]

One of the big problems is the fact that if someone wants to buy and re-open a closed factory, and "toxic" materials are found buried on the property, the new owner can become at least partially (and sometimes completely) liable for cleaning them up. So can any bank which loans them money. The law is called "CERCLA" and it's probably done more to cause inner city industrial blight than any other Bad Democratic Idea there is...though when the Clintonistas started talking about "environmental racism" they almost topped it.

-Eric

[Voltage]

But the task of making these goods is increasingly being assumed by more efficient machines and processes.

Yes those dreaded machines..the ones that don't demand social security, medical insurance, retirement benefits. They don't file lawsuits.

Yes we must get rid of those machines!

[lelio]

One thing articles like this always overlook are the costs imposed upon firms like this for having operations in America. Local property taxes for one,

Good start. Our entire tax structure needs to be revamped: no more income taxes, property taxes (for businesses to start), and start raising tariffs on imported goods and services.
To start up a factory or any other business without an eye to moving everything to India or China would be insane right now. What do our politicians think is going to happen when the middle class shrinks as everything they do is offshored? They'll probably just expand the boundaries of middle class-ness to include a lot more people.
The problem I see is shortsightnesses on the part of our politicans. Its not shortsighted for business people to want to offshore: it is probably in their best interest to do so. Politicans with leadership (and isn't that what the Bush administration is about) will see that this is unhealthy for the economy as a whole and will try to make it more desirable to keep the jobs here.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

So what are you saying, the unions are at fault?

This cannot be!

This man is obiously unemployed because of Bush.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

Now he finds himself stranded in the labor pipeline along with a generation of assemblers, welders, and tool and die men who learned their trade on the job and know little of computer-driven machines and new age manufacturing techniques.

I have a friend who is a machinist and he took the training classes it took to learn the comptuer machining equipment. He has several offers because he was willing to learn something new.

What a concept! Learn something new to keep up with your profession?!

Ring! Ring! - Cluephone - It's for you...Are you gonna pick up?

[KDD]

So what are you saying, the unions are at fault?

Yes. The unions have been destroying our manufacturing base in this country long before Bush was even a blip on the horizon. In fact, he has done more than any other Republican President in ages to try and prop up the industry with steel tarriffs, much to the displeasure of fiscal conservatives. Sit yourself in the chair of a factory owner. Would you want your buisness operation dictated by your employees? Would you want to deal with the threats and destruction by union thugs such as mentioned in the above posted lawsuit? No...Labor unions destroy any feeling of employer-employee goodwill. Companies feel no loyalty to extortionists. Heavly unionized industries will be the first to go. Once the union parasites have no body to feed on they will die. And industry can rebuild under a free market concept.

[lelio]

And industry can rebuild under a free market concept.

Its being rebuilt under a free market concept -- in China.

[junta]

It will take longer than most suspect, remember the "rich" control one of the most sophisticated propaganda machines of all time. Never underestimate the power of mass media and remember few people read the samizdat of the day. I'll bet most of the underemployed think tommorow they hit big will live large become instantly irresistable to members of the opposite sex and be in demand by FOX to appear on the next sleaze show.

[KDD]

Not just overseas.

Right to work states like mine are taking many of those jobs...Of course we aren't making 54,000 dollars a year for screwing a widget to a gadget...But then again, we don't expect to.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

Yes. The unions have been destroying our manufacturing base in this country...

Say it ain't so. I left off the /sarcasm - sorry.

Would you want your buisness operation dictated by your employees?

This kinda sounds like the problem we are hiving with the media wanting the complaining soldiers to be running the show in Iraq.

Liberals can't stand leaders who lead.

[Screaming_Gerbil]

...We are moving to a society most in the uSA will not like. The potential violence that this will bring ... A society consisting of a very small number of very rich and a large number of unemployed. See Argentina for a current example. Such societies are inherently unstable. Educated and otherwise productive people do not take being idles well. The results come in many forms including what happened in the Weimar Republic.

Wisely observed, friend.

I'd like to second that. Good comment, Harpseal.

[KDD]

The Effect of Right-to-Work Laws on Economic Development

The right to decide for yourself whether or not to support a union in your workplace: union officials dismiss it as "the right to starve", but for the last thirty years Right-to-Work states have been outperforming compuslory unionism states such as Michigan. This report demonstrates how individual freedom and higher productivity give workers in Right-to-Work states the edge in job opportunities, employment, and purchasing power.

http://www.mackinac.org/4290