The demand cycle heats up. Need new line workers. Union start rate 15-18/per hr. + benefits after 3 months.
Hire trainees. Local HS Grads and street corner loafers. they have, I have observed: (A)No physical ability, i.e. an 8-hour day is killer! (b) No reading and writing ability which translates into a profound inability to follow written instructions (c)No shift discipline, i.e. ability to show upn time for shift or 5 0r 6 days in a row. (D) It also goes without saying that they have had no mechanical training, which gave older workers a modicum of industrial "common sense." They in some cases must be tiaught to use a screwdriver, and the accident rates among new hires are very high.
Out of 30 or 40 hired, 3 or four make it through 90 days. Older workers take up slack and love it for the overtime.
Slow-down after 3rd quarter. Sack all the new people who are left. High pay, low productivity. Cheaper to pay old-timers (heavy attrition among them anyway) who are left, some overtime.
Next time the cycle heats up, managers hire temporary workers: $10-13 an hour paid to an agency, no benefits. In many New England scenarios, these new temps are going to be illegal Mexicans, or equivalent. The fact that they cannot speak English at first or not read and write is no more of a supervisory problem than using HS Grads. They will be on time. They will work a full week. Come next cycle, throw'em out. Start over when you need them.
Sooner or later, some corporate people logically deduce that it would be cheaper to build a maquiladora on the South Side of the border and leave it closed three months a year.
Soon there is no work in the village and we are left with a huge illegal population and every one is poor. It comes as a shock to the union jocks who gave in to a two-tier wage system: i.e. Good wages for them and benefits: Poor wages and no benefits for temps.
Pardon the condensation, but the pattern is the same all over New England. This country, if my region and experience are valid examples, is not ready for globalization. Our younger people are not properly prepared.
We desperately need to improve the preparation of our "MTV" people, in school and on the job with a training wage setup so employers can afford to train them for a couple of years. They need it. They are simply not prepared mentally or physically, to perform in a business setting.
Because of the short-comings of today's younger people (which is certainly NOT THEIR FAULT), illegal aliens (now instantly deliverable where and as needed by 18-wheeler) are taking over vast swaths of the bedrock industrial jobs. Stopping this destructive trend will certainly take border discipline, but we also have to do away with the economic need for them on this side of the border by training our own people.
It ain't gonna be easy. There is no leadership coming from either party, or even the unions on this.