WI teachers unions cont...Follow

The problem is, the US can't compete with the other countries to do that sort of thing. And I do agree with what Jon Stewart said about it, US workers shouldn't have do those jobs for the pay that Chinese workers receive. I wouldn't want to work for the 7 dollar an hour min wage, 40 hours a week, assembling **** like that, let alone a Chinese/Mexican pay scale.

Union or not, Chinese and Mexican labor is still cheaper. My factory is non-Union, and we are still opening operations in Mexico. It's cheaper, and is right next door to our customers. Our customers won't give us the jobs if we don't have operations in Mexico to cut shipping costs. That's the main bonus, the cheaper labor is just an added bonus as far as management is concerned.

Our plant CEO was looking at opening a factory in China about 5 years ago. He came back with reports on how things were over there. Rolling blackouts just to keep the factories alive. People being paid per year what our workers were making in less than a month. (And believe me, our workers are not making a lot, again, we are non-Union, and they make just barely above minimum wage.) You just can't compete with that.

You'd like to believe that the quality of workers in the US is higher than that of China or Mexico... but I'm finding out in the five years I've been working in this system... that is not the case. Unskilled labor is Unskilled labor, around the world, it's all the same. I'm thinking US workers at this bottom level tend to be a bit lazier than their foreign counterparts (obviously anecdotal evidence here).

Unions don't help things, but they aren't the reason why China and Mexico look so nice as labor-intensive factory locations.

I was talking about manufacturing and fabricating, not "assembling". The low-skill low-wage jobs we can't compete against China (and many other countries) is in assembling. But that's because the component costs are relatively constant (global economy and all), so labor is the only real factor.

I'm talking about operating the facilities which make things like circuit boards, and computer chips, and all the other components which later get assembled into end products. That's the area that the US absolutely could compete in. The US has a much more stable power and transportation system than most of the countries we're talking about here. And in many of these cases, the overwhelming costs are associated with building the plants, maintaining power for them, delivering raw materials to them, etc. Labor costs are such a tiny tiny portion and are more or less irrelevant in that area of manufacturing.

It's also an area that requires "trained" employees, but they don't have to be super-genius level folks with advanced degrees (or any degree at all for that matter). You absolutely could support working to middle class folks in large numbers in those sorts of industries.


You are correct though, it's not just unions who hurt that (although they're one of the pieces). Most of those jobs have disappeared due to environmental activism which makes it nearly impossible to do things like build a fabrication plant anywhere in the US. We *could* be competitive (very very competitive in fact), but literally shoot ourselves in the foot with our own overly restrictive regulations.

Edited, Jul 8th 2011 5:52pm by gbaji

You should totally tag the sombreros and maracas with "Made in 'merka" logos.