Build More Autos Overseas: Marginalize More U.S. Families
The economic structure of Jim Henson's cartoon realm called Fraggle Rock reflects our own. In one HBO episode, the industrious, hard-hatted Doozers prepare to leave the rock, which would have quickly left the Fraggles starving. Somehow, politicians and powerbrokers in this country don't see the simple parallel. If the U.S. continues to send its manufacturing overseas -- with the latest proposal General Motors plants -- the result will be hungry U.S. families.
I saw this up close and personal as I toured the U.S. last week on the 11-state, 32-city "Keep it Made in America" bus tour. I talked to unemployed manufacturing workers who are desperate. Through no fault of their own, they've lost their jobs, their homes, their health care. These are the people who are the strength of America, who in better times volunteered in New York City after 9-11 and in New Orleans after Katrina. Now, they're forced to get groceries at their union hall's food bank. They're humiliated.
This economic crisis was inflicted on them by recklessness on Wall Street and in Washington. Over the past 40 years, politicians have eroded regulations that could have helped prevent the sub-prime mortgage bubble and bust. And Wall Street banks and investors took full advantages of that rule-free environment to behave capriciously in the market, causing stocks to tank, driving unemployment up to the current 8.9 percent, and contributing to the loss of 5.2 million manufacturing jobs since 2000.
Let me introduce you to four Steelworkers, four hard-hats struck down by the decisions so disastrous to the economy made in Washington and on Wall Street. They are Diana Arends, an aluminum can maker; Matt Dossett, a rubber worker; Andy Nirschl, a papermaker, and Kevin Vest, a copper miner.
Diana Arends' employer, Ball Corp., shuttered its Kansas City aluminum beer can manufacturing plant March 27. Ball blamed the economy when it announced the closure that cost 150 Steelworkers their jobs. Beer sales are down. As the economy contracted, Americans had fewer coins in their pockets for every little pleasure, including throwing a few back.
The plant closure was both an economic and emotional shock to Arends. She's divorced, and supports a daughter and granddaughter. Before the plant mothballing, she routinely worked 12-hour days, with the overtime paying her mortgage and bills. Now she's only getting unemployment.
Her house in Lees Summit, Mo., on which she has paid for 10 years, already is going to foreclosure. She doesn't have any credit cards, but she does owe on a used car she bought a couple of years ago.
When she heard the plant was to shut, she immediately dropped her internet and cable TV services, ended trash collection and stopped eating out. She buys food in bulk at a wholesale store. But it's just not enough.
She's thinking about taking the remnants of her stock market-ravaged 401K and using it to support herself, her daughter and granddaughter because she has been unable to find another job. No one has called her back for a second interview, although she also has 28 years experience manufacturing grain bins for CTB, Inc. Let's face it, she points out, who's going to hire a 59-year-old?
She recollects, a few years ago, "I got to feeling set. I had a 401K and just a few more years to retire." But now she's jobless, and soon she may be homeless. "I did nothing to deserve that," protests Arends, who went the extra mile, serving as president of USW Local 13, a position she loves, but one she'll be forced to relinquish May 14 because she no longer is employed as a Steelworker.
Diana Arends is concerned about running up federal debt to pay for the bank bailouts and stimulus package, so she doesn't understand anyone proposing to use one dollar of that money overseas. The stimulus is American tax dollars designated to create American jobs - not Chinese jobs or Korean jobs or Mexican jobs. So when General Motors submitted a bail out plan in which it would get American tax dollars, then use them to build fewer cars here and more cars overseas that would be sent back here to be sold, Arends just couldn't believe it. "These are middle class jobs lost, the people who go to the grocery store and support food banks and the Little League," she noted.
And they're not just GM assembly line jobs. The more jobs GM sends overseas, the more support and supply jobs go overseas too. And that threatens the economic lives of millions more Americans -- workers like Matt Dossett.
He's a rubber worker from Fancy Farm, Ky., furloughed with 50 other Steelworkers from the Goodyear Tire plant in Union City on Feb. 28. Dossett, 27, who tried to get a job at the plant since he graduated from high school, had worked there just a year before the lay off. He knew it was a good job because his father and uncles had all worked there. "They had their whole careers there," he said, "They worked 40 years and retired there. They had good lives from working there. It is one of the best paying jobs in this area."
He worked on a balance crew in the curing department - cooking tread onto the tires, a place where it could get well over 100 degrees in the summer. Still, he longs for that call back, "I really enjoyed it down there. I enjoyed the people I worked with and the job I was doing," he said.
But that's all jeopardized by the sagging economy, unfair trade practices by China in supporting its tire makers which export to the U.S. and GM's plan to move production offshore - including to China.
When he was working, Dossett paid off his car loans and saved money just in case he got furloughed. But making the mortgage payments is starting to get tough. His wife works, so that's helping them pay the bills. And they've cut out all frills. They don't visit her family in Chicago anymore. They don't go out to eat. They don't visit Nashville for weekends. Dossett has a credit card, but no debt because he only uses it in emergencies. "I worked hard for everything I've got," he explained, "I'm trying not to lose it all now."
He sees a clear connection between GM building cars here and his job. Because billions of American tax dollars have already gone into bailing out GM, they shouldn't be talking about moving jobs overseas, he says. "We gave them money to build here, to create jobs here. Let the Chinese pay if they want a plant in China," he said.
Like Dossett, Andy Nirschl worked for an industry damaged by unfair trade. He was a process operator, controlling pulp, for the NewPage Corp. Kimberly mill in Wisconsin. It made the kind of glossy paper used in magazines and new car catalogues. The mill had operated in the town of 5,000 since 1889 and was the largest employer. Kimberly was NewPage's largest producer, but the Ohio corporation closed it after a defeat in a trade case with China under the Bush administration.
That was Sept. 30, 2008. Nirschl, president of USW Local 2-9, knows all the gory details: 475 Steelworkers lost their jobs, and 125 salaried guys got thrown out of theirs. When NewPage refused to sell or re-open the plant, the town considered renaming its high school teams. They are called the papermakers.
Nirschl's wife, who had worked at home, had to switch jobs so the family could get health insurance. He'd married late in life, so he had a good start paying off his mortgage. He isn't behind yet but knows lots of fellow Steelworkers who are. He has only one credit card and no debt on it or on his cars, so he's in better shape than many of his friends. Still, his family has cut out vacations and eating at restaurants.
Nirschl got a new job earlier this month, a good union job with the state helping the unemployed find work. It doesn't pay as much as the mill did but has good benefits. The pay comes from the $700 billion stimulus package, and he's hoping the position is renewed in the state's next budget year in June.
He says he hopes Congress gets on board to save the American auto industry. He says his friends understand that to have a strong, solid economy, America must manufacture. It's not clear to them why politicians are willing to back struggling banks with billions but balk at supporting industry.
Like Nirschl, Kevin Vest talks about a cycle of industrial life. It's obvious to him. The haul truck driver furloughed with 600 fellow Steelworkers Feb. 13 from Freeport McMoRan's Chino mine in New Mexico, where they extracted copper and molybdenum, a steel hardener, offers this story:
He read in a newspaper about a $100 million wind farm to be built near his daughter's house in Arizona. The 30 wind turbines are to be manufactured by a company from India and the huge towers are to be constructed in Mexico. Vest wants to know why GE can't make those turbines. If the American company did the work, they'd probably buy the copper wire for the turbines from an American company. And that company might buy the ore to make the wire from his mine - or some other downed U.S. copper mine, putting some Steelworker back to work. If there's one cent of tax breaks or stimulus money in this wind farm, then it's doubly outrageous to employ Indian and Mexican workers.
For the same reason, Vest always buys American cars. There's copper wire in engines and molybdenum (molly) in other steel car parts. Buying that car keeps him employed, but also fellow Americans who make the glass and axles and all the other parts.
And he's got news for people who deride the quality of American cars. He's owned a series of them and driven them more than 150,000 miles with no problems. Now he has a 1997 Chevy Silverado with 160,000 miles on it that he's planning to drive 1,400 miles to Iowa to visit relatives. His father has owned nothing but American cars, and when his brother bought a Nissan, told him to park it down the street. "When I got out of the service," Vest said, "my dad tried a Toyota Celica GT. . . He looked at me and said he felt bad to have even test driven it. He bought a Ford Ranger pick up."
At 54, Vest is without health insurance and behind on his credit card payments. He owes $2,000, and the collector is hounding him. He is hoping to get a job at a mine in Arizona, close to where his daughter lives. But that may not be possible until copper prices rise.
Workers like Vest, Nirschl, Dossett, Arends and me are taking the message to Washington D.C. this week for a teach-in to explain how crucial manufacturing is to the economy of this country and how essential manufacturing is to construction of automobiles in this country, not just the final product, but also all those products leading up to the final car -- from glass for windshields to glossy paper for brochures. We are going to try to explain that 7.2 million paychecks are dependent on U.S. autos, including health care, education, service and other jobs, so that the politicians and policy makers understand clearly that the very idea that General Motors would ask for taxpayer dollars to ship more car manufacturing overseas - and then import the cars - is an insult and an affront to American workers - as well as an economic threat to the country. We are not going to allow American manufacturing to starve for support. But that support cannot go to pay for manufacturing overseas, or ever more American families will end up stretched like Arends, Dossett, Nirschl and Vest.
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This is an outrage! I will not buy a car from China Why do we trade with China anyways its a communist country! When Russia was communist we did not trade with them! We are not allowed to trade with Cuba because they are communist. So why is China OK? What are we suppose to do all our work is going to a communist country! How do we pay taxes if we don't have jobs? I say let them go to China and stay there!
Let Ford be the one for us then.
How is it OK to deal with China? Where's the outrage on this? We might as well call our selves the United States of China
We borrow money from them we send them all our work what are we suppose to do?
Great satire! Love it. Very funny. Either that ... or...
:-)
I've been saying this for years. Once all the jobs except for Wal-Mart greeter are outsourced who the heck is left here able to buy stuff? Tha parasitical CEOs can always join their off-shore accounts in some tropical paradise, but the rest of us are screwed.
So we're paying $700 billion in taxes to stimulate the economy by creating jobs with public works projects, another $15 billion to "save" GM, and untold billions more to save GM some more -- and yet GM is going to CUT jobs. As the investor/taxpayer, this does not make sense to me. At the very least, GM should be prohibited from sending jobs overseas on my tax-dime!!!
Hello Taxpayers,
Now you are going to OWN GM !! So you better take steps such that GM actually makes some profits and you get back your investment.
Are you going to join UAW and keep GM costs high OR are you going to allow GM all it needs to bring down costs and hopefully turn a profit so you get your investment back.
you are no longer the "downtrodden". You own it so make sure the company is profitable !!
This shall be really interesting. Do you think we can get away with giving $25 billion a year to Government Motors for making poorly selling cars or will we have to shell out more to perpetuate the myth that the American made car lives?
Although the current recession is the immediate cause of the unemployment of the four people whose stories Gerard tells, manufacturing jobs have been declining in the United States for a long time. Rather than being due to "recklessness on Wall Street and in Washington," the decline in union jobs in the auto industry primarily has been due to the "recklessness" and stupidity of the executives and managers of the auto companies themselves. Even assuming that the quality of cars made by GM, Ford and Chrysler now is equivalent to that of cars made by foreign car makers (including those operating in the United States), the fact remains that for years the Big 3 turned out cars that were lower in quality than those of their competitors. This was not due to differences in skill of the labor force, but was a result of choices made by management. As a result, the Big 3 lost many of their customers, and now their workers are paying the price. you need to get with dude don't make comments with your head up your A__
"This was not due to differences in skill of the labor force, but was a result of choices made by management."
Correct. The CEO thieves have sub par junk components installed, mainly made in communist china. Has anyone really taken notice to the high price low end junk that we as American consumers buy.
check the web for foreign car recalls
Another good article, Leo. People should be outraged and march on Washington to let government know how they feel.
Manufacturing is a natural for the U.S. -it is bad politics that stand in the way.
I would vote in 2012 for a NEW political party that supports manufacturing. Clearly the Dems are very timid about this and the GOP doesent care.
A real job for a real man is in manufacturing. Very little of good can come out of sitting at a table shuffling papers and inventing wealth with a computer.
Fully agree. Which is why I am designing products that are being built by mostly Asian women... right here in the US. Female Asian assemblers are so much better at building precision electronics products than real man, it's not even funny.
Can't help it... but I would never hire a guy for a job that only a Vietnamese or Korean woman can do right.
:-)
they're cheaper to huh
My Chrysler mini-van has 101,000 and I sold the last one at 140,000. Other than the transmissions they have been great. Unfortunately they were made in Canada.
You mean your transmission went out after less than 100k miles? Wow... what a piece of crap.
that trans was made in Japan
The question is this. When GM and the rest of them ship all the formerly good paying jobs overseas, only to ship the finished products back here to be sold, will anyone have enough money to buy?
That is right. If Americans don't make a decent living, how in the world are they going to remain consumers of anything?
Although the current recession is the immediate cause of the unemployment of the four people whose stories Gerard tells, manufacturing jobs have been declining in the United States for a long time. Rather than being due to "recklessness on Wall Street and in Washington," the decline in union jobs in the auto industry primarily has been due to the "recklessness" and stupidity of the executives and managers of the auto companies themselves. Even assuming that the quality of cars made by GM, Ford and Chrysler now is equivalent to that of cars made by foreign car makers (including those operating in the United States), the fact remains that for years the Big 3 turned out cars that were lower in quality than those of their competitors. This was not due to differences in skill of the labor force, but was a result of choices made by management. As a result, the Big 3 lost many of their customers, and now their workers are paying the price.
Great comment !!!!
Thanks to the US automobile industry lobbying for no limits on fuel efficiency, the country had to import oil for $500 billion last year. That's close to 4% of GDP. It's a national security nightmare because we can't live without oil from nations unfriendly to us. It's an eternal ball and chains on our economy.
We don't need any more apologists. We need solutions. If they are made in Japan, so be it.
But that's how capitalism works, the privledged will profit off of the misfortunes of others. Isn't it about time we stop treating people like dollar signs?
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