Are you looking for a job in America? Read this.

[Gin]

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6am
While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor
(MADE IN HONG KONG).
He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today.
After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to
the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he ! ! ! got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while.
He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured himself a glass of wine ( MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV ! (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in.....AMERICA.

[wakfs]

1. Unions....

...are the only answer left to protect American workers.

[glarius]

2. And union are fast disappearing aren't they?

There has got to be a change!

[DK666]

3. OW raw nerve.... it burns.....

I do product design and manufacturing research. I spend most of my time designing products that will be built overseas. It comes down to the US policy. I can buy a Mustang GT in the US for about 25,000 but If I buy it in Japan it will cost me 80,000. Or I can buy a Lexus in the US for 40,000 or buy a Toyota ED in Japan for 40,000 same car. We don’t tax imports like other countries.

I see it everyday.

[dawgman]

4. UNfortunately unions have been shortsighted thus far.

Unionizing the already heavily unionized manufacturing sector won't help. Sure for a short while the wages and benefits would increase but eventually the jobs would leave the country.

The only way to battle to flow of jobs overseas is to unionize the workers overseas. THAT should be the goal of the modern union. They need to go and organize in indonesia and the Philipines. Only when the unions fight the global corporations on a global scale will American manufacturing workers have a chance


Rob Nemes
History 449
Professor Honey

Summary of Black Workers Remember

Throughout the final chapters of this book the people who were interviewed discussed the importance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s importance to the cause of the Memphis labor movement. They also discussed the correlation between the civil and labor rights movements. This is well articulated and through the narration of these individuals this affiliation becomes obvious and the connection between the two movements well defined. However in the final chapter the message of the book becomes clouded and somewhat blinded by the ideals it professes. The labor movement of the latter part of the century does not stall because of corporate greed but because of the shortsightedness of the movement itself.
It was well established in the first seven chapters of the book that there was a clear and important relationship between civil and labor rights. The author and the interviewees spend three hundred pages illustrating this integral connection. The labor movement was instrumental in the African-American rise from poverty and welfare wages. Along with this rise came political power and basic civil rights. Corporations lost their main source of cheap and efficient labor as well. This loss eventually fell as a burden to those who were the most expendable to the corporations. The most expendable people were the working class, unionized people who had taken the cheap labor pool from the corporations.

Conclusions Drawn
Corporations are capitalist institutions. Capitalism is like water in a sense; it will always seek the path of least resistance. If the easiest path to achieve profits is blocked by a well-organized group of laborers capitalism will seek an easier route. Imagine a bucket with a hole in the bottom. If one tries to fill this bucket the water will simply flow out the bottom of the bucket. In essence this is what happened to the labor movement. The movement focused organizing on a local, regional and national scale. This was insufficient to keep the water in the bucket. In order to effectively keep the water in place the labor movement should have fought tooth and nail to beat the corporations to the global punch.
The unions became territorial. They tried to keep the jobs at home by lobbying for tariffs and taxes. Instead of focusing on what can be done to protect themselves they should have tried to protect others outside of the United States. How could Nike be making $175 shoes for $3.55 in China if the laborers who make the shoes were organized and were able to collectively bargain? Slave wages would have gone by the wayside in more than just the Western world if the labor movement had had more foresight and attempted to progressively combat corporations.
As was noted above corporations are by nature capitalist. Capitalism is by its very nature greedy. Greed is what drives capitalism. Therefore, corporations are by their very nature greedy and greed is what drives corporations. In order to blame corporations for being greedy one must be either naïve or fighting to change the capitalist regimes that support them. Accusing a capitalist of greed is tantamount to accusing a wolf of being a carnivorous hunter. The only way to fight and control the greed of capitalism is to remove the cheap labor on which it preys. The only way to remove all sources of cheap labor is to organize the labor not on a local or regional or even a national scale but to organize on a global scale. This will further the labor/civil rights movement. Unfortunately, in this the American labor/civil rights movement has failed.

[wakfs]

14. Good post

I hadn't thought of the global union possibilities. I, being a white-collar tech worker, am more concerned about preventing MY job, and other white-collar jobs like it, from being moved "offshore." Just watched Bill Moyers' NOW over the weekend and they had a story about this problem. Experts (whoever they are) predict at least one million of these white-collar jobs moving to India next year alone. If manufacturing AND white-collar jobs are moving to cheap labor countries, what jobs will be left for us to do here? Only a strong union can prevent things like this from happening.

[dawgman]

18. globalizing unions is the only to keep them from being broken

Look at the steel industry, for instance, as soon as it was readily apparent that the union wouldn't be broken and was being made stronger by the inclusion of non-white members the American steel industry collapsed and was moved to a place where labor was cheap. If that cheap labor pool was unionized it would no longer be cheap and the American version of the industry would have survived.

[benfranklin1776]

5. Good post.

It highlights the fact that individual choices the consumer makes can eventually come back to haunt him or her. Buying American made goods helps one's fellow worker and by extension oneself. Alas the opportunity for the average consumer to choose made in the USA products has diminished greatly as jobs have been shipped overseas. If future job growth is to come through trade then the trade must truly be fair. That is trade agreements must require trading partners to genuinely open their markets to US goods and adhere to a set of uniform international labor and environmental standards. Also, American workers need to recognize that they are all in the same collective economic boat. When the bell tolls for one industry it tolls for all so not only is collective action through unionization required but also cooperation among unions in various industries to stand for all workers as they do in France and Germany.

[Gin]

7. The message for these times is...learn to live with a little...and

travel light during this downward spiral. By the time the other countries unionize, we will be a 4th world country.

[benfranklin1776]

11. I am afraid you are right and that is the trend, but.....

......we should not be willing to go down without a fight. Whomever the Democratic candidate is he or she will have to spell out how he or she wishes to stop this downward spiral. They must support things that empower workers like check card union organizing which deprives companies of the ability to intimidate workers into not joining unions, anti-strikebreaker legislation, strengthening of the Family and Medical Leave Act, repeal of Taft Hartley, money for worker retraining in ALL industries affected by outsourcing and most importantly a guarantee that trade agreements will contain ironclad worker and environmental protections.

[Kolesar]

6. Here is where the action is: http://www.

http://www.texasfairtrade.org/

[ikojo]

8. Joe Smith did not make the decision

to manufacture those items overseas. That decision was made by greedy corporate executives.

When offered a choice I try to buy American but I also realize that just because something has a made in America tag does not mean it was entirely made in America...it could have been assembled in America but be composed of parts made elsewhere.

What we need instead is an international union movement where unions demand a living wage for all workers worldwide. There was (and is) a union that advocated for this 100 years ago but it was marginalized by Sam Gompers and the AFL-CIO. The IWW advocated for ONE BIG UNION but was attacked by the more mainstream unionists of the time.

The longer I live the more I see the correctness of the IWW message.

ONE BIG UNION!!



AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL...

[Muddleoftheroad]

15. Greedy? No. Wise? Yes.

I'm sorry, but it is NOT the job of a company to keep YOU in a job. It is the job of the company to make a profit, to survive in a now-competitive worldwide environment.

If you change the rules worldwide so that everybody earns the same thing, then jobs won't move away. But that is unlikely, so it is the job of management to make decisions to keep prices low.

[TrogL]

9. If America would build a decent product

People would buy it.

The situation used to be a lot worse and many people (myself included) got scared off of American products because they basically sucked and had crappy warranties.

[kodi]

10. ever notice the only things made in america in a wal-mart are the people?

.

[AlabamaYankee]

12. The only change I would make

is that everything is made in china these days, with the possible exception of the wine, and that would be Chilean.

The countries that were the original offshore manufacturing sites - Mexico, India, and others - are now losing their manufacturng jobs to China. Basically the race to the bottom for manufacturing wages has accelerated so fast the the initial winners are now in the same boat we are.

[sinkingfeeling]

13. Joe Smith just doesn't get it......

Doesn't he know that 'working' for a living is just soooo passe? The goal is to invest, invest, invest....no capital gains or dividend taxes to be paid! Everyone is switching to 'capital' these days and labor is just so old-fashioned!!

[regnaD kciN]

16. Ah, yes, the old "blame the victim" mentality...

In other words, it's the unemployed worker's own fault for not buying American in everything!

:grr:

But what if said unemployed American doesn't have a choice? After the crackdown in China back in 1989, I resolved to stop buying Chinese goods. Right. I found out differently when I tried to shop for tennis shoes. Every single shoe, without exception, was from China! I didn't have the choice to "buy American" - it was either support the Chinese, or go barefoot.

The assumption that companies are only moving their jobs overseas because they know that average American workers/consumers will buy their products anyway is pure BS. They move them overseas because "everyone else is doing it," and they have to match the savings in labor costs of other companies or else get their business downgraded by institutional investors, thus putting themselves in jeapordy. Since "everyone else is doing it," consumers don't get a choice in the matter, except the choice to "do without" completely.

And, by the way, holding up French wine as an example of U.S. job loss is particularly lame.

[mitchum]

17. I think that all corporate executives should be forced to live in ...

the third-world hellholes from which they draw their cheap labor

[Clete]

19. Unfortunately that may be sooner than you

think right here in America, unless you young people start unionizing. A closed union shop for workers can accomplish a lot, not only in raising wages and benefits, but also in keeping jobs in this country. Any worker, who is not management needs a union.

Did you know that Ann Coulter's lawyer father made his money and notoriety busting unions?

[dorktv]

20. My company is hiring...it would cost and take too

long to process health claims if they outsourced it overseas.