Reply #169: Sure there is strife at non-union plants

[kcwayne]

I keep saying repeatedly that corporations are abandoning the American worker. I have never said they are abandoning just union workers.

I ain't buying the old "holding production down" bit.

Have you ever worked in a union? I had a worker that came into the machine shop off a training program that hated shuffling around looking busy, and preferred to run her machine to make the time go faster. The union pestered the crap out of her to slow down. She wasn't wired to fuck off all night long, and didn't realize what they would do. The first warning was after she spent a couple of hours retooling a multi-spindle drilling machine, someone came by with a ball peen hammer and broke all the drill bits off.

She slowed down (in her mind) but it wasn't enough. Someone called her at home and threatened to break her leg if she didn't get with the program. Her productivity dropped miraculously from 65% to 30%. She asked for a transfer, but I left before she got it.

It doesn't matter at this point that unions are more productive than non union workers (if that is indeed the truth). You can count on one hand the number of companies that are planning expansion of operations in this country, and I would guess there is no plant coming on line with a union contract. As I keep saying, management has taken the ball and gone home. They are not playing here anymore.

If you think China is a fad, you need to spend more time reading about what is going on over there. I have two friends that are merchants that are buying furniture from China. Neither one of them is getting state sponsorship, they are simply buying containers of goods through a broker, shipping them here and selling them at huge markups. China has an unlimited supply of $80-$100 a month labor that builds furniture among other things. Do you think that .50 per hour as compared to $18.00 per hour is compelling? Furniture executives do, and they acted quickly.

Over the last 5 years, every major furniture manufacturer in the US stopped producing here and either moved their plant to China, or contracted with Chinese companies to manufacture their products for them. The complete and total loss of an entire industry that had been in the US for over 200 years in less than 10 years.

That's not a fad. Its a sea change.

Here is some "good" news. A French semi conductor plant in India that needs to retool has decided to pull out of India and go to Thailand. Why? Because Indian engineers at $5K per year, and fab labor at $9 per day are too expensive. That, my friend, is what the American worker is competing with, and the union platform has no answer to this any more than any worker, politician, or concerned citizen does.