Posted on 09/18/2005 9:19:51 AM PDT by Willie Green
Angel Mills worked at GST AutoLeather in Williamsport, Md., most of her adult life. She cut, inspected, packed and shipped leather upholstery until she was laid off in June 2003 as the company scaled back local operations and shifted production to Mexico.
"It's sad. It's scary. I've been a factory worker all my life, and I didn't know what I wanted to do," said Ms. Mills, a 38-year-old Williamsport resident with a teenage son.
But by March 2004 she was taking a half-year course to become a state-licensed massage therapist. A federal program that helps workers who lose jobs owing to foreign competition paid for her training and offered extended unemployment benefits.
In July, she started working at Venetian Salon and Spa in Hagerstown, Md.
~~~SNIP~~~
Mr. Thomas said that for all trade adjustment program workers passing through the consortium, the average wage was $14.36 an hour before the layoffs, while after retraining it was $11.87 an hour, a decline that is common for factory workers who have to restart their lives.
U.S. Labor Department figures indicate that among the retrained, those that find new jobs end up making only 70 percent to 80 percent of their old wages on average.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
There never has been, there is not now and there never will be free trade. It is market entry control that every business seeks and they promptly enlist government to obtain it.
And your solution is to give "Corporate America" even more power? Mercantilism would be "Corporate America" in fact rather than just rhetoric.
Capitalism and I believe it was first pointed out by a capitalist. But the question is bogus since what good is 1 million dollars on an island.
why can't we establish a tariff schedule which factors the implications of onerous US laws/enforcement on US competitiveness.
I.E. OSHA, EPA, etc compliance costs D industry $x/unit. That becomes an equalization tariff for imported D items.
What say you ?
Or, this person will realize that working labor all his life is not a good plan, upgrade his education and break into the $100,000 a year market.
Then he'll use his improved skills to automate another factory that can better compete with the low wage labor intense factories in china, building a more superior and quality product in the process. Other components that need to be made by labor can be made in cheap labor markets, imported back in, assembled, sent back of at an overall lower manufacturing cost. You don't want to but import taxes on those items. which is why we have free trade agreements which list all sorts of products.
Obviously you didn't get what I was trying to say. Without trade dollars are pretty useless.
I'm very tired of hearing the whining & woes of the free market labor troubles.
I am a survivor of the first round of plant closings as a result of NAFTA. The fact of the matter is that The Trade Act provided job & education assistance. I was able to go back to school (was working my way through, anyway) while my unemployment benefits were extended. THE PROGRAM DIDN'T WORK FOR ME - I MADE IT WORK FOR MYSELF AND MY FUTURE.
Now, 10 years later, I have gone from making 7.00 per hour in a textile mill in NC to making over 45K as a degreed accountant in OH.
Plenty of my friends had the exact same opportunities (and even started school with me), but squandered the opportunity to make something else of their lives. It was the difference in goals and outlooks of life that did it. I wasn't happy living in sub-standard poverty and was willing to do whatever it took to lift myself out of it. The others..... well, they gave up and, once the unemployment benefits dried up, they were back where they started with no one to blame but themselves.
Don't sit there and tell me that Free Trade is a bad thing because it displaces workers. It was the best thing that ever happened to my life!
And what is government deciding which man gets how many dollars?
There's one thing that anti free traders can't explain, although they try toss out this doom and gloom stuff all the time.
If it's been so bad since we've had NAFTA over the last 20 years, why has our economy done so well over all?
To make things, you need cheap raw materials to make value added products to ship back out. Free trade works both ways.
And who wants to work labor jobs all their lives anyway? Those days are long gone, and with all this global warming crap, intense industrial activity will continue to drop off. Educate yourself and work in the corporate world. Be skilled, be a professional in one of the many fields in high demand. manufacturing jobs, unskilled labor will never return to the levels they once were.
Or maybe he works for a company that depends on the cheap import of widgets while another more politically powerful company can survive without them and unfortunately Pat Buchanon has just been elected.
You are the type of person I was talking about.
"Eventually your job will be outsourced."
Cute jab. Clever - but very false.
Won't happen with my position. Can't outsource what I do - proximity is the key and the demand to a closely held office.
Protectionism and wage/price controls are equally worthy in my opinion.
I'm safe too. In fact, more and more Americans everyday are finding or creating new jobs with higher pay. This idea that those of us who're willing to compete should be forced to support those who don't want to, well, it's just not American!
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