Posted on 08/25/2003 2:05:47 PM PDT by snopercod
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- This year's highly publicized job losses in North Carolina manufacturing, including the Pillowtex bankruptcy, could mean trouble next year for President Bush in a region that was a stronghold in 2000.
Bush won more than 56 percent of the vote in both North Carolina and South Carolina in 2000. But his strong support of free trade has turned some against him in the South, where U.S. trade policies are blamed for the loss of jobs in textiles and other manufacturing sectors.
Andy Warlick, chief executive officer of Parkdale Mills in Gaston County, said he doubts he will repeat his 2000 vote for Bush next year.
"He made a lot of promises and he hasn't delivered on any of them," Warlick said. "I've had some firsthand experience of him sending down trade and commerce officials, but they're just photo ops. It's empty rhetoric."
Fred Reese, the president of Western N.C. Industries, an employers' association, said executives are beginning to raise their voices against Bush and are planning education and voter drives.
"We're seeing a new dynamic where the executives and employees are both beginning to see a real threat to their interests. You're going to see people who traditionally voted Republican switch over," Reese predicted.
The hard feelings were on display days after Pillowtex's July 30 bankruptcy filing, when Republican U.S. Rep. Robin Hayes walked into a Kannapolis auditorium to meet with former workers.
"Thanks for sending the jobs overseas, Robin!" shouted Brenda Miller, a longtime worker at the textile giant's Salisbury plant.
In December 2001 Hayes -- who is an heir to the Cannon family textile fortune -- cast the tie-breaking vote to give Bush the authority to negotiate "fast-track" trade agreements, trade treaties that Congress must vote up or down with no amendments.
At the time, Hayes said he won promises from the Bush administration that it would more strictly enforce existing trade agreements and pressure foreign countries to open their markets to U.S. textiles.
"Are we pleased with the way they responded? Absolutely," Hayes said. "Are we satisfied with where we are? Absolutely not."
Jobs in many industries have fled overseas since 1993, when Congress passed the Clinton-backed North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. About half the textile and apparel jobs that existed in 1994 are gone.
Since Bush took office in January 2001, it is estimated North Carolina and South Carolina have lost more than 180,000 manufacturing jobs.
And even more textile jobs could be out the door once quotas on Chinese imports expire at the end of next year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Cass Ballenger voted for NAFTA and fast-track, and has seen his 10th District lose nearly 40,000 jobs, primarily in the textile and furniture industries.
"Certainly, there's a political cost to any controversial vote no matter which side you take," he said. "People are casting stones, but we're trying to pick them up and build something."
Democratic U.S. Sen. John Edwards voted against fast-track in 2002 after voting for an earlier version. In 2000 he voted for permanent normal trade relations with China.
Recently, though, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Edwards has attacked Bush's trade policies and called for fairer trade measures.
Robert Neal, vice president of the local chapter of the Pillowtex workers' union, said Hayes has worked to try to ease the impact of job losses in his district.
"Though he (Hayes) voted for fast-track, he is really concerned about the workers and their conditions in the state of North Carolina," Neal said.
Not everyone feels that way.
Reese is organizing 1,500 manufacturing companies across North Carolina in an effort to leverage what he calls a new voting bloc.
In South Carolina, voter drives are planned for the first time at Milliken & Co., which has about 30 plants in the state. Mount Vernon Mills of Greenville, S.C., is forming a political action committee.
The company's president Roger Chastain, a one-time Bush voter, doesn't expect to support the president or Jim DeMint, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Ernest Hollings.
"We're basically liquidating our whole middle class, polarizing people on the two extremes, have and have-nots," Chastain said of the manufacturing job losses. "We'll be a Third World country."
My prayers go out to you, that your husband keeps his job, and that you can stay home with your family.
You're different than me. When I'm working on a project I like and want done well and quickly like building a house or car or football stadium or world's greatest nation, I like to get as many people as possible (that are qualified to do the job) working on it. What this country can build with 500 million people is going to be a lot cooler than what it could build with 10,000.
Take it from him... dogbyte12 really, really cares about you and the little people. He feels your pain.
Tort reform still has not happened. Is it the republican house, the republican senate, or the republican President who isn't dealing with this? The notion that eventually there will be some action when there are 75 republicans in the house is ludicrous.
Bill Clinton passed his budget with 50 votes and an Al Gore tie breaker. Why can't this administration get 50 republicans and Dick Cheney to institute Tort Reform?
An American's job? Isn't it the owner's job to give out to whom he wants? Seems to me the owner would want to give the job to the person he thinks will give him the most for his dollar. If that's the American, than nothing to worry about and no need for the federal government to tell the owner what to do with the jobs he owns, right?
Coincident with this demise in the social dimension has been a growing distortion in the economic dimension. We have lost our way and forgotten Judeo Christian fiscal principles. We abuse usury and set unreasonable expectations regarding quality of life improvement versus previous generations.
Things went completely out of control as the Baby Boomers came to dominate the economy. Some how in spite of the WW-II experience and their awesome deeds and courage the Greatest Generation were not particularly effective as parents. Furthermore, the increasing impact of Gramscian social engineering undermined whatever slim authority they might have had.
By the 1960s our Communist enemies were supplying drugs and fomenting radicalism on the college campuses. An entire generation who never had to face limits on either behavior or life expectations later came to power, many of them, no matter what their stated political leanings, were at heart the most nihilistic hedonists ever to walk the Earth. Now, we shall witness the harvest of what we hath sown.
The way you mock "little people" reveals alot. You care not. Masking it by belittling those who do, works for a while as a decoy, but in the end, you are who you are.
You are a traitor. You are a traitor to all americans. Americans with the last name of Smith, Chan, Okonobe, Martinez, Horowitz, and Jackson.
Yes, you just don't get it. Mock it more, it still is true. Some of us believe that our family, our community, our nation is more important than your theories. Let us drop our tarriffs, allow workers to come in, only to train, to take american jobs, while we don't get the same treatment in return. As long as the quarterly report looks good, who gives a rip?
So, Nazi bait, little person bait, doom bait to your hearts content. The fact that you feel the need to throw the nazi card out makes people believe that you feel you are winning the argument. Believe that all you will.
Btw, I only am aware of one "little person" around here. It sure ain't the people in the flyover country who made this country great with hard work. What is it you do again?
I definitely don't feel superior to anyone. I'm just out here trying to work and have a good time like everyone else. (Well... everyone except Merchants, Indians, Chinese, Mexicans, Rastafarians, and Italians... they are all just out to steal jobs from their rightful American owners.)
No, outsourcing is not the answer. It was *an* answer for companies looking at cost containment, but after some point it is self-defeating. you pay for the outsourced team, and you pay locally to manage it. I've been working with overseas teams for 10 years now, and it is a double-edged sword. but the fact that there are skilled, able, and educated people willing to do a job for less is a fundamental thing. Creating walls wont make it go away, in fact, it will harm US company competitiveness and make the situation worse.
The answer to the question 'how to keep jobs at home' is to advance and improve productivity AT HOME. This is the way it always was, and this is the only answer that can have us stay ahead of the curve. I am shocked that in this tit-for-tat debate we havent paid more attention to that simple fact! It is neglected that *even if* India programmers are 1/4 the cost, if there is a quality differential of even 20%, you go with the higher quality place. Or that SW productivity is well known to vary by a factor of 10X from person to person. This is true in general for knowledge-type professions. a great R&D person is more useful at $100k than 10 mediocrities at $10k each.
In the end, a global economy will end up investing where you can get the best return on investment and highest quality for lowest cost. Some of these 'outsourcing' places do have low cost, but we also give up sources of innovation and flexibility. THAT is where team USA can win - by being more flexible, resourceful and capable, and 'ahead of the curve'. India IT is capable, but is like the mainframes of old, big, cumbersome, long duty cycle, bureaucratic.
YOu can outcompete with the right strategies.
All I hear (from some of my Libertarian Friends) is that I should prepare myself for finding another career; give thanks for the current ride but don't go down kicking and screaming. That's not "libertarian" or anything except defeatist! We should not give up. Part of that is "if you cant beat em, join em" meaning add 1 million US SW professionals to 3 million India SW professionals and you have a great combination for mixing local and remote support and R&D. So for example, one solution is aiming towards that which needs to be done here - coordination, local customization, reqts gathering, prototyping type development, etc. Let India IT do the productization and maintenance-type support. not zero-sum but win/win.
Is the expectation going forward that Americans will have to find another career every ten years or so. Is that possible for the average person? It is reasonable to think that what you did 10 years ago is not good enough for today, given the advance in productivity. If you could program at a rate that produced an application in a month, now it should take a week. Frankly, we do not do ENOUGH in the software inductry of going further with productivity enhancements. My team is using C++, great, but there must be a way to do even better, this is where we were in 1996.
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