I read all of the complaints on this forum about manufacturing jobs leaving the country. Bush is blamed now, and will be through at least the first four years of the Obama administration. Bush is easy to blame. Nobody wants to look at the truth.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/67124-american-axle-strike-unions-continue-to-ki ll-u-s-manufacturing?source=feed

If most companies had their way, we'd all be working minimum wage, no benefits, and no nothing. That’s why all these trade agreements have been designed without the American worker in mind. The world is changing and the executive class in this country doesn’t give a rat’s behind about its implications for the American people. And to think that our own tax code works in favor of this type of arrangement is in my opinion criminal. So to blame unions I think is unfortunate. Somebody has to look out for the worker because it sure the hell isn’t their employer.

That’s why it’s so important that we have lifelong learning in this country. If your employer up and moves their factory to some third world country, these dislocated workers should be able to be fully retrained without worry about cost of said training.

Damn those unions. Twisting the arms of companies and forcing those CEOs to sign contracts they don't want to sign.

Thank God for those non-union companies that keep all their jobs stateside and NEVER outsource.

Thank GOD for China so the LARGE companies have somewhere to send American workers jobs.

"Damn those unions. Twisting the arms of companies and forcing those CEOs to sign contracts they don't want to sign."


Doesn't make much difference what the CEOs signed or why they did it. When the jobs are gone, they're gone. Exorbitant income or no income. Which should I choose. Let me see now.

CHOOSE to OUTSOURSE that's what the BIG company's are doing......

"CHOOSE to OUTSOURSE that's what the BIG company's are doing......"


They sure are and I would to. Fight with the unions, fight with the federal government, fight with the courts. Let's see now, send the work to China, fight with no one. Which should I choose.

NO jobs for Americans, NO money to buy your crap, NO company.
Let's see....
WOW!

I live in a right-to-work state. We're doing just fine. Plenty of jobs, plenty of sales.

What would I choose.....hmmmmmm...tough one.....ABOLISH NAFTA! Nafta is killing America. OH well, at least it's lining the pockets of the wealthy.

"What would I choose.....hmmmmmm...tough one.....ABOLISH NAFTA! Nafta is killing America. OH well, at least it's lining the pockets of the wealthy."

We can agree on NAFTA being bad. Besides, why do we need to send the jobs to Mexico. They're all moving here.

We're doing just fine. Plenty of jobs, plenty of sales.

Farming? Picking corn?

Time to sign this off and go watch Shawn Hannity.

OH YES!
Pass the popcorn FAUXNews is on!!!

What you don't see in a right to work state is a healthy middle class.

You don't see it because nearly all the checks on over exploiting workers have been removed.

No income -vs- some income.

Yeah, ok if those are the rules, then most will choose income. Of course they would.

However, that does not have to be the rule.

Before Reagan, companies made money just fine, and paid a wage that was solid. Now, most of the new jobs don't do that and as the jobs cycle out and new workers come through the ranks, we are seeing a growing divide between the wealthy and everybody else.

Frankly, we don't need an environment like this. It's a net loss and will eventually lower the standard of living here to the point where it's no longer decent.

That's a net loss to the nation as a whole.

Again, let me stress this point: NO NON-UNION FIRMS ARE OUTSOURCING ANY OF THEIR JOBS!!! Because if they are outsourcing, Deane Johnson would be full of crap and this thread would be pointless.

Unions are a religion for some. They attend services at the union hall. They have scriptures anointing the virtues of unionism. And goodness follows the faithful wherever they may go.

Religions are a union for some. They demand recognition and power despite possible irrelevancy, they maintain solidarity despite the unsavory actions of a few, and as Deane has pointed out, there may be too much time spent maintaining the power of the leadership over serving the needs of the members.

Zing!

If we did not have unions, we would all be working 6 to 7 days a week for under $2 an hour, no vacation or health coverage.

"Zing!"

Huh!

Either we get to self-organize, or we see labor regulation, or it's some combination of both.

With the setup the way it is right now, we are in trouble living standard wise.

When our economy was mostly an export one, the value of work made sense relative to the value of goods and services.

As soon as offshore labor was allowed into the system, that value proposition changed for the worse. One company moves it's labor, then enjoys a price advantage over the others, who soon follow until all are now leveraging the common denominator.

Ok, so one industry niche goes away, no big deal, right? People can choose to retrain and seek to sell their labor services elsewhere.

Now, open the flood gates, and whole industry segments have this happen.

So, people retrain again, and again, and soon, the number of solid labor prospects becomes less than the number of people wanting to work them.

In this climate, people then begin trying to get an edge. Work longer hours, multiple jobs, etc...

That's where we are today.

The last to go are the core trades. These people depend on physical skills more than they do higher education. It's all important, but it's also kind of a trap because high dexterity and learned trade skills are more difficult to migrate to other labor positions through higher education.

The barrier to entry is higher, and there still are all those people, who invested in higher education, looking to make a worthy wage too.

Big crunch.

The latest was Truck drivers from Mexico. These guys don't have the same safety and quality of life limits our guys do, so they are pouring in, happy for the oppertunity to work for what they see as better conditions.

All of this happening while big business minded people are saying that we should be so lucky as to even have jobs.

It's all been a huge attempt to reset expectations and bring our quality of life down to the lowest common denominator.

And it's working nicely, I might add.

Unions are here, pushing back for us, setting some standards and giving people options. It used to be our government would set market rules such that big money could be made, and labor compensation made sense.

That's no longer true now.

Here's the thing to think about. There will always be some place in the world where people are hosed, willing to work for most anything. Peak oil might mitigate the shipping advantages, but that's not happening yet, so the rest of the workers, in this environment get to look forward to their wages going downward from that pressure as any established niches of their economies get outsources so the big multi-national companies can always make more.

It's a race to the bottom, and that's never good for anybody. It's not good for us, and it's not good for our nation where global competition is concerned.

And people wonder why businesses are closing, our currency is valued less and such.

This is why.

We are literally selling our future for dollars in the here and now.

Wonder why those people in other nations are hosed so badly?

Because their governments are not making sure they can compete. They are letting them be exploited for any number of reasons.

That's happening here now.

Do we really want to compete on that basis?

I don't.

Unions might not be appropriate for every situation. In the past, before we allowed this crap, it was a healthy mix. Now, they really are one of the last barriers to full on, work exists for the lowest bidder sub-standard wages for the majority environment we have.

As I've written before, I've had to retread multiple times. It's a bitch and I'm sick of it.

It needs to stop.

Today, the majority of workers are suffering a situation where downward wage pressure keeps their cost of living increases and merit increases below what makes sense given the cost of goods.

Get a 5 percent raise this year, if you are lucky?

See it drained away through much higher overall increases in cost of goods and services.

At our current buying power, the actual value of work is very under valued, making things like the minimum wage fight a complete joke!

Unions are not killing US manufactoring, NAFTA is! NAFTA is a failure and needs to be abolished. All it is doing is making the Rich Richer!

Absolutely.

My problem with unions is not in seeing a worker get a fair wage. It's the thugery, the thievery, the protection of the incompetent, and the blind worship of the union like it was a religion.

The above doesn't even mention the greatest union crime of all, featherbedding.

The appropriate compensation of the American worker is a completely separate issue from unionism. We're now in a world economy. That puts pressure on us like never before as we are competing with low wage countries. That means Americans are going to have to work longer, harder and for less. That's probably not good, but is a fact of life.

Part of our problem is that we don't have a solution. A union going on strike is not a solution.

Saying unions must go because excessive worker wages and benefits are hurting American competitiveness is the same as saying corporations must go because excessive CEO compensations packages are hurting American competitiveness. Unions are an important part of a free market system that also values individual and human rights. Corporations and unions should keep each other in check for the benefit of workers and consumers. But in todays climate, all we seem to care about is the corporate bottom line, and we forget the reason why any business exists in the first place, which is ultimately to improve the lives of all people. Sell a good product at a fair price, pay a fair wage to produce it and generate a fair profit for the owner, and all will prosper.

"A union going on strike is not a solution."

Correct. It is a means to a solution. Unions (really, a collective of workers) have the right to place certain demands on employers, just as employers have the right to demand certain things from workers. If workers have no right to place any demands, then employers will attempt to squeeze the most labor out of them with the least compensation - in effect, get that worker as close to being a slave as possible.

The employer has many ways he can leverage the worker, but in the end, the worker has only one item to leverage against the employer, and that is his or her labor. And that leverage is most effective when labor is collectively withheld, i.e. a strike. If you think that laborers enjoy going on strike, you are greatly mistaken.

The solution is very simple.

We simply start restructuring things such that doing the work here makes sense.

When we do, this will all be over. We can continue to enjoy a global economy. We don't have to buy into the race to the bottom where labor is concerned.

Step 1.....abolish NAFTA.

Ed, you can make all of those points you want to, but that giant sucking sound you hear is made by the jobs moving off shore.

The other thing that you should consider when it comes to corporate profit are the dividends. Those companies are owned by Americans either direct through stocks, or remotely with mutual funds, 401Ks, or IRAs. If you are involved in any of those things, perhaps you want to make your feelings known by attending the annual shareholders meetings and demanding that companies make less profits. Be sure you post your activities here so we can cheer you on.

Executive compensation I will agree with you on. It's excessive. The thing I would like to see done is a limit on how much compensation can be deducted as an expense by the corporation.

"Ed, you can make all of those points you want to, but that giant sucking sound you hear is made by the jobs moving off shore."

No argument there. And that giant flushing sound is America buying overseas-produced products almost exclusively, sending their dollars out of the country. Thing is, as times get tougher and corporate profits rise, unions are likely to become more attractive to workers, not less. Look at the resurgence of the SEIU - these folks are generally at the bottom of the income ladder, and are hurting the most in the present economy. Are they jumping from the union ship shouting "Every man for himself?" No, they are realizing that only through cooperataive effort and pressure can then even begin to achieve a living wage and reasonable working conditions. For the lowest on the economic food chain, unionism isn't about greed but about survival. Even the average "hard-working American" will get screwed by businesses and corporations if left to fend for himself.

NAFTA has to go first, to allow America to regain control of it's own trade decisions. Then we can work on correcting the imbalance between workers and employers, whichever way the imbalance may be tilted.

I'm not the biggest fan of unions, but they do serve a purpose and we are better for having unions than not. Like anything in life, there are pros and cons, and the pros outweigh the cons. Blaming unions for jobs going overseas is simplistic and naive.

Rather than blaming unions, we really need to figure out how to make the USA a great place to do business. We’re not going to compete with countries where labor costs are peanuts. So that leaves us with becoming the most technically savvy people on the planet. We have a long history of accomplishing much in the technical arena, but more needs to be done. Industry needs to better communicate what it wants from educators in terms of developing an education strategy for the future. And schooling needs to be life long, not just high school or 4 years of college. We need to find a way to create a system of life learning which allows people of all stripes to plug into a system that teaches skills relevant for the new economy.

But in terms of unions, I think it’s unfortunate that the greatest gains in recent history made by unions are in the area of unionizing government employees. Pretty soon, the only unions that will be left are those representing people who work for the government. It may sound like sour grapes, but I think it's unfortunate. And too, it's going to cost us a hell of a lot of money. Government employee pensions and benefits are not cheap.

The government is the biggest union on the planet.

deane sez: "but that giant sucking sound you hear is made by the jobs moving off shore."

Yup, and every single one of those jobs sent overseas are union jobs. American companies ARE NOT exporting non-union jobs, Never have, never will. Because if they did, this would expose Deane as the Mother of all Nitwits.

"Government employee pensions and benefits are not cheap."

Ever check the pay of a ESD teacher? A file clerk in the county court house? DIRT CHEAP!

Deane_johnson:
I read all of the complaints on this forum about manufacturing jobs leaving the country. Bush is blamed now, and will be through at least the first four years of the Obama administration. Bush is easy to blame. Nobody wants to look at the truth.

That's quite a stretch considering only about 10% of the workforce is unionized in the US. The real problem is your republican government giving tax breaks to companies that export jobs overseas where we really should be giving tax breaks to companies who try to keep jobs here. So, I guess Bush has had a hand in this although I wouldn't come right out and blame him, he just signed the legislation OKing the tax break.

Deane, if you want to talk about greed and I think good right-winger that you are, it's what your driving at. Let's talk about out of control CEO compensation packages. It's always funny to me how THAT greed is always OK with your side.

One other thought, it's the lack of anyone standing up for the worker that's the reason for stagnant salaries in this time of out of control prices. You can't blame the unions for that one either, goes back to your precious corporate execs.

Aok, since the Republicans are the cause of everything bad in this country, and the flaming liberals are the cause of everything good, you must be right. It surely must be the Republicans.

Absolutely it is!

Acceptance is a big step Deane. Let us know if you need any help.

We've had a Democrat controlled Congress for almost four years now. That giant sucking sound is as loud as ever.

"We've had a Democrat controlled Congress for almost four years now."

Really? Democrats took the majority in November 2006. This is May 2008, so your 4 year estimate is about 2.5 years off.

Secondly, the Congress is still controlled by the GOP thanks to their use of the filibuster. So while Democrats technically hold a majority of votes, it's not enough to overcome their shameful and obstructionist use of the filibuster. They've used it more times than anyone in history.

The giant sucking sound I hear is the air from your head!

The Democrats have been in control of both the US House and US Senate since January, 2007. And the only legislation George W. Bush seems interested in signing into law are war supplementals. Now that’s what I call honest politics. George W. Bush, liar and chief, alleged fiscal conservative, can’t even estimate the cost of his war correctly. But everything else, he vetoes. This president, a joke of the highest order, never met an appropriations bill he didn't like when the Republicans controlled both bodies. But when the Democrats took control, the only thing this worthless scumbag can say is, VETO!

Now his own party is starting to turn against him, ala the Farm bill override.

I meant to type 2 years. At the same time, I fully expected it would be all the Republicans fault for not letting the poor Democrats work their magic. It'll be that way for the next four years also, even with the Dems in control of Congress and the White House. Watch and see.

I believe there were many promises made in 2006 regarding what they would do if given control. We're still waiting.

The biggest promise was ending the war in Iraq. But our pig-headed dilettante and chief insists that more must die for a cause most believe is a HUGE and tragic blunder of monumental proportions. And hopefully, the Democrats are smart enough to let the billionaire stimulus package, aka the Bush Tax Cuts for Rich, expire. Victory for Democrats and the American people will take place in November, 2008. That’s when the real work of restoring American credibility domestically and internationally truly begins. The Republicans had years to prove their worthiness, and they blew it, BIG TIME! May the lessons we learn by this current debacle, that of George W. Bush as president, keep us mindful that it takes someone with more than an old west mentality to be president. It takes skill, intellect, a strong moral compass and compassion, all critically lacking in our current chief executive.

You are going to pay more taxes when the Democrats take control.

I don't have a problem with paying more taxes. The biggest lie the Republicans have perpetuated is that you can have it all without paying a dime for it. The cost of calling this country home is helping pay the freight. We have major infrastructure needs that if not taken seriously soon, will force use to pay even more later. I do feel spending responsibly is a priority and should be taken most seriously, but to deny that fact that we need to make major investments in our country would fly in the face of the truth. The whole less taxes means greater enrichment for the masses is a hoax. We don't each live in a vacuum. We are a part of something much greater.

The biggest lie the Republicans have perpetuated is that you can have it all without paying a dime for it.

You are going to pay more taxes when the Democrats take control.

Your kids, kids, kids are going to pay if another EXTREME RIGHTIE gets in the White House.

"You are going to pay more taxes when the Democrats take control."

We know. Somebody has to pay for the gaffes of the current administration. I take pleasure in the fact Republicans are going to have to pay for Bush's gaffes too.