Centerfield: Why Factory Jobs Are Going Away From The, Er, <i>Industrialized</i> Nations

March 03, 2008

Why Factory Jobs Are Going Away From The, Er, Industrialized Nations

First, I want to say that all the far-too-many laid-off factory workers and their families have my sympathy. If only we knew a way with less pain than capitalism.

...the biggest reason, by far, is that American standards of pay and quality of work conditions have passed most industries by. A factory job is no longer a plum, but, more and more, something boring with eh pay and bad working conditions. It is possible for laid-off factory workers to upgrade, with some time in classrooms and a move to a promising city for the new career. You can even make some smarts back to deal with change more easily: google neurogenesis.

It is, of course, annoying to be laid off, say, at 55, and face the prospect of only being able to upgrade just before retirement. And, of course, there's nothing easy about any of that.

Of course, there's another special reason for all too many of these layoffs: bad management. I see it as a serious failing in capitalism that so many companies, like GM, Chrysler, and Ford, can be managed so badly decade after decade. It gets to be a culture that can't be overcome even when capitalism's theoretical remedy's applied and the company's bought, like Chrysler being bought by Daimler and then spat back out.

Protectionism doesn't solve this, because then you just get expensive and worse good internally, that are unlikely to be good for export because the internal market is so flabby the world has whole different expectations. The heyday of American automaking involved making world-class products, easy to sell in the whole world.

In today's world, more and more of the new standard of good jobs are located near universities. There are more and more better jobs in Michigan and Ohio - but located near the University of Michigan and OSU instead of in Detroit. Detroit needs to be making more deals to improve their higher ed availability. Instead of competing to kowtow to laid-off factory workers, American Presidential candidates should be trying to show the way forward, by preaching the value of higher ed, to both individuals and city.

McCain gets lots of credit from me for not kowtowing, but he's not showing today's path forward, either.

Posted by Jon Kay at March 3, 2008 11:43 PM

Comments

I think it's a little more than annoying to be laid off at 55; it's pretty much devastating. I don't think there are any easy answers to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. and there is certainly a lot of demagoguery about the issue, but I think it's a bit flippant to say that people should be able to simply retrain and upgrade to a better job. Lots of people seem to want to blame the workers themselves for their problems.

Posted by: Marc Schneider at March 4, 2008 02:07 PM

I find this statement a little curious... "There are more and more better jobs in Michigan and Ohio - but located near the University of Michigan and OSU instead of in Detroit."
Now admittedly I moved out of Michigan a couple years ago, but the rest of my family (2 sisters, a brother, and all my parents) still live there. When I talk to them, all I hesar about are all of the companies pulling out of Ann Arbor, and very few, if any, coming in. Where do you get that there are more and better jobs there?

Posted by: Stephanie at March 4, 2008 02:59 PM

Make that HORRIBLE management.
Start off in the 60's when US steel companies invested in real estate instead of their own industry, paving the way for Japan and other countries to gain market share in the US. The Alaskan pipeline needed to be 48-inch internal-diameter, high-tensile steel, rated to 25,000 psi (stronger than the steel in the hull of a World War II submarine), and about half an inch thick. No U.S.-based steel firm could meet the specifications. The job went to the Japanese mills. U.S. Steel turned down the pipeline job as it was building a new 63-story office building in downtown Pittsburgh instead of upgrading its 48-inch plate-mill in Homestead, or putting new investment into its National Tube subsidiary in McKeesport, Pa.
Then there's the automotive industry, missing everything from robotics, to quality control, to new hybrid technologies. It sat fat and happy and stupid for decades.
The only reason Hardley Ablesons are still around is the steep tariff on big bore bikes from Japan.
Bikes were guaranteed to leak oil so that you never needed an oil change.
They still use a lot of Japanese and other asian parts.
Right now we're giving tax breaks to oil companies while we are barely giving any money to alternative energy industries so our solar production is lagging as is our windmill production.

Posted by: Marcus at March 4, 2008 07:11 PM

Centerfield

A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics

March 03, 2008

Why Factory Jobs Are Going Away From The, Er, Industrialized Nations