Levi Strauss cuts another 2,000, shutters U.S. plants

San Francisco Business Times ^ | 9/25/03

[TopQuark]

I guess you missed that point:

Well, the unemployement is 6.1% which until very recently was considered minimal possible.

[Willie Green]

Haven't bought a pair of Levi's since they pressured the Boy Scouts to accept gay scout leaders or lose their monetary support...
Anything that hurts Levis hurts the gun-grabbers.
Levi is one of the worst when it comes to promoting the liberal and anti-family agenda. Good riddens and I hope Levi goes bankrupt....

Have any of you braniacs considered that this move actually INCREASES the amount of profits that Levi's can funnel into their social agenda?
And in the meantime, good hardworking Americans are put out of work in the private sector and dumped into the government social welfare unemployment system?

Or do you actually understand that and applaud it for those reasons?

[TopQuark]

The statistic you cite moves parallel to the unemployment reported. Keep in mind also that "civilian work force" includes people not looking for a job, which is why it is not used as a base in the reporting of the main statistic.

[Beck_isright]

In the 90's (I used to work for a vendor for Levi...if you don't believe me, just remember the name "Cone Mills") Levi was given incentives via the Clinton adminstration to first relocate textile suppliers and sewing plants in Mexico. At the end of the great Liar's term, they got tax breaks to move plants to the ChiComs. The pubbies have yet to nor desire to reverse this trend. Our tax dollars are being used via the Import-Export Bank to move these plants to China. Have a nice day at the polls. That's a tough decision. Vote for the liars on the left, or the liars of the middle left.

[TopQuark]

I do not know in what way you mean 13 years to be special.

If you believe in conspiracies, I cannot contribute to a discussion any further.

[TopQuark]

You refer to actions taken by institutions, with which you (and I) disagree.

Most of all I meant corporations.

[piasa]

After Levi's made the snotty decision to pull their jeans from a long-time vendor who specialized in selling work and farm clothing because that faithful Illinois businessman's image wasn't chic enough for them- and worse, was too conservative for them. A lot of people in Illinois quit buying their products- and this was in a part of the country where people didn't use the term "jeans" but used the word "Levis" to describe any blue jeans. Levis used to be all everyone wore so their brand name just became part of the lexicon. Levi's "chic" dirtball image evidently didn't do as much for business as they had hoped; even the use of "Levis" as jeans faded, pardon the pun.

So I can't say I miss them...

[Beck_isright]

"I do not know in what way you mean 13 years to be special."

Obviously you are not an economic historian. Please, read, get a clue. Then get back to the board.

" If you believe in conspiracies, I cannot contribute to a discussion any further."

Tune in to Art Bell or whatever that late night crap is. I don't have time to talk about "conspiracies" with a loon. The reality is that we are using our tax dollars to export manufacturing capacity. If you are unable to read the budget reports from the Congress, I can not help you and feel that this discussion is a moot point.

[Starwind]

The statistic you cite moves parallel to the unemployment reported.

You evade. That would be the answer to the question "In what direction does the total unemployment/underemployment rate move"?, a question neither you nor I asked.

You have not addressed your reliance on only counting those receiving UI benefits as unemployed. How do you account for those who are looking for work, but receive no benefits? By what terminology do you designate them?

Keep in mind also that "civilian work force" includes people not looking for a job....

You are again mistaken. From the report:

The civilian labor force is the sum of employed and unemployed persons. People are classified as unemployed if they meet all of the following criteria: They had no employment during the reference week; they were available for work at that time; and they made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week.

Are you going to post a leading business media report of a mass factory hiring to show us what has been selectively ignored, or will you ignore that suggestion?

[Beck_isright]

" Most of all I meant corporations."

Corporations are not "institutions". Corporations are private entities enabled by the American institutions that you and I "disagree" upon their actions. Levi is not what I would call a contributor nor good citizen of the conservative cause. However, that's an opinion based on 10 years of interaction with their San Fruitsisco social engineering, errrr, headquarters offices.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

Agreed. Boycott companies who ship jobs overseas.

[TopQuark]

It does not really matter, really. Suppose we hit the rate of 10% --- really, really painful. One could argue at that point about how to lift the economy out of that state, etc. There is no magic here; economists do not know complete answeres to this question.

That is not what is happening currently in the country and on FR in particular. The management of corporations are singled out and suspected of all sorts of evil. The actions of corporations are interpreted within a framework that reads like a communist textbook.

The basic truth remains the same whether the unemployment is 6% or 10%: it is up to us to keep ourselves competitive as a nation.

I do not hear anyone raising the question that perhaps we do not deserve the salaries we receive on average. I do not hear people suggesting that perhaps the progressively increasing functional illiteracy is catching up with us and affects our competitiveness. What I do hear is singling our management as the culprit of everything that happens.

One could also point out that we did not really have any serious recessions in the last 20 years. The whole generation of people has grown up without knowing that business cycles exist. The older generations, which knew, became complacent and forgot about that fact also. There is no particular part of society that is at fault: there are good times and there are bad ones. We have a spectactular time for 20 years, almost unparalled in American history. Now we have a downturn, that's normal. We also have changed priorities and spend a great deal on security within and without the country. That's unproductive but costly. Who is at fault? Nobody: we lived in the la-la land for three decades while the West was attacked, thinking that it would not happen to us. We had an unreasonably good time THEN; now we simply return to reality.

As I said earlier: all of these and perhaps other equally or more important factors are not even brought up. There is only b-----g against the management, and it is usually done without even elementary understanding of how it functions.

So you win. Let unemployement figure be 10%. Make it 20%.

[lasereye]

I think clothing manufacturing has been declining for decades in this country. It's a fairly low skill, labor intensive industry, so it can never pay much in wages.

[TopQuark]

Obviously you are not an economic historian.

Fortunately, I am not: an economic historian would be even more confused by your posts.

At the same time, I don't think you are any kind of an economist. Or academic. Or researcher. Or thoughful reader. Or a person that is capable of a civil discussion. If you belonged to any of the aforementioned categories, you would know what "clarifying question" means.

I do, however, apologize for the typos.

[Willie Green]

It's a fairly low skill, labor intensive industry, so it can never pay much in wages.

True, but it's still private sector employment for a sizeable portion of our citizenry.
I'd rather having them earn a living in the private sector than dump 'em on the government unemployment social-welfare system.

[TopQuark]

Are you going to post a leading business media report of a mass factory hiring No. I do not follow very closely these statistics, and they are made more difficult to come by because they press does not cover them.

In the last few days, on a similar thread, someone did post a compilation of hirings, but I did not copy it.

to show us what has been selectively ignored, or will you ignore that suggestion? I may not be giving you the answer you want to hear, but I am certainly not ignorign the question. You are not being fair.

I am not going to split hairs about the statistics (read the previous post where that has been addressed). The point remains valid: the times we live in are not good only in comparison to the 1990s, which were abnormally good. The current press does not reflect that. The posts on FR, icluding this thread, give a distorted picture as well. Finally, management and the "rich" are singled out as the culprits of all evil. All of this is wrong, whether the unemployement is 6.1% of 6.5%.