Let me start by saying I am not looking for sympathy.
My customer wanted a 35% price decrease which would be impossible.
I offered a less expensive design but was told they didn’t want to change.
There is NO WAY they are getting the exact same product from China.
We knew it was coming but they just made it official by telling us they are going “off shore” for the item.
I just like to make people aware of this sort of thing because it is happening all over the country and is affecting employment everywhere.
Manufacturing jobs built this country and the USA will weaken without them.
I could go on a big rant but it has been a long week and I am tired.
If anyone cares enough to have questions or comments I will try to respond.
Maybe later I will create a thread listing some of the facts that show how incredibly uneven the playing field is.
It could take several hours to type I am not going to do it now.
I know you didn’t ask for sympathy, but you have mine. It is increasingly hard to see a bright future for the American middle class. I think we are headed for a future with a few well-off people, a relatively handful of the truly rich, a huge group of working poor and people on welfare, and a shrinking middle class. While the economy, viewed as economist does, may be in fine shape (i.e. the GNP/capita and average income will be high) the social fabric will be frayed and torn. Crime will go up, and politics will become even more polarized and crooked.
All on the altar of free trade. Enjoy your cheap foreign goods while ye may. No matter how cheap they are, you won’t be able to buy them when you are unemployed.
Indeed tis’ a sad state of affairs. It’s a shame that history must always repeat itself over and over, for the majority they just trying to get ahead, or just is too ignorant too see what is going on.
It’s a shame it’s not as easy as tossing some tea overboard from a ship to get people to wake up. I can’t really see the US as the main superpower in the world for much longer.
99% of all manufacturing jobs will leave the US in time. Just the way when you were in school and the teacher would ask who knows a farmer, so will be the same answer for when a teacher asks your kids who knows a factory worker. The US is out of the industrial revolution and is now in the post industrial revolution. All our money will be made in services, wheither its software, data processing, consulting, etc. The fact of the matter is US companies can not compete with foreign countries that have billions of workers willing to work for 1/20th of what an American worker makes.
All that is from my world econ. teacher who has been doing this stuff for like 50years.
Yeah when NAFTA went through we lost alot of jobs. Tons of companies are just leaving to mexico and shit. Its horrible but thats life. I don’t remember the name of the company but there was a big windshield wiper company in Buffalo that left because of the NAFTA.
I am glad to wake up this morning to so many responses.(even yours newman)
I will have more comments later.
Trico is the wiper company that went to Mexico.
Fisher Price also had three plants move to Mexico; EA, Holland, and Medina.
I will be back later today.
software programming and even help desks are all being outsourced to india already. Most likely when u can customer service for many companies you are speaking to someone in india.
americans are very slow to adopt change.
if we want to keep manufacturing in the US, people need to change.
for example.
my company was bought out by a company in mass.
we have a small plant in malaysia that we use for a lot of stuff.
the new parent company decided we need to move as much product though there as possible. It’s just too expensive to make stuff here. last year we had a 20% profit level for the year, and under budget…
so, they laid off 15 people.
thats the way the world is heading.
make it for less, with less and only as good as it needs to be.
manf. has to turn itself into a service to survive. people want what they want, when they want it. if you can provide exactly what they want exactly when they want it…
what else do you need.
1-3 week added shipping times make that sort of thing difficult.
Blame Hilary! Anyways, even Parker Aerospace that manufactured hydraulic components for military and civilan aircraft has plan oversea such as China. But the critical components are still manufacture within the US though. Sorry to hear about your lost.
You would think that companies would crack down on “wasted company time”.
I agree with the statement about the post industrial revolution aspect. Theres not really that much we can do about it. Ive had cutomers who send out blind letters requesting price drops as much as 15% from current prices to keep the job from going elseware.
the sad thing is a flood of service workers causes more deflation in the economy. Just look at the number of landscaping, grass cutting, snow plowing guys in the phone book from 10 years ago and today. Many of them flood the market and undercut each other to the point of bankruptcy.
Anyone notice reifler concrete closing its doors recently? i drive past them everyday and have purchased products from them. Can it be that cost effective to ship cast concrete objects from overseas? when they can be made in your back yard. just a little rant. Its scarry to think that a rather large local company can just put up a closed sign & a answering machine message to “call in” workers not to come in anymore overnite.
i dont believe that was a union “controlled” company. but rather fuel prices probably had a lot to do with declining profits. & the wonderful building market here in erie county.
all of the US manufacturing problems trickles down to unnecessary, overpaid UNIONS. Unions have had their time and their place… but that should be over now. They will slit thier own throats.
You wouldn’t believe the things i saw that wasted everybody’s money. When i was a supervisor for an automitive manufacturer… Union members had closets hidden deep in the plant with make-shift beds set up, even a pair of slippers. This wasn’t where they spent their break time…they were there hiding, sleeping, and getting paid. Even when they are caught…it’s the union officials job to support them and fight for their “rights”
I’ll never forget the time i saw the plant manager walk in on a Union member, on a sunday (that’s over $60/hr) who was hiding in a corner and fell asleep with his laptop while porn was palying. No, he wasn’t fired… he was a union member. He was just sent home for the rest of the day.
do you think the mentality of today’s union workers affect the quality and price of your products? Ask AWDrifter.
disclaimer: there are good, honest, really hard union workers out there, but the MAJORITy are not
:word: Josh it right. I saw the same things when I was a supervisor in the auto industry, different company, same bullshit. I won’t go as far as saying unions need to be ended completely, they have their purpose. But they need to wake up and realize what they are doing to themselves and take DRASTIC concessions to get to a profitable level for the company. Even with that though, companies need help from the government to end this free trade bullshit that makes it way too easy to send jobs overseas.
AWDrifter runs a non-union shop…manufacturing jobs are moving to China b/c people get paid $1/hr to do the work and that’s ok b/c the gov’t subsidizes their living by giving them $5/mo rent. America’s free market drives up living costs, and thus wages. If you got rid of unions you’d just increase the size of the lower & lower middle class, and you still wouldn’t be competitive (other than automotive industry, and even then, the biggest problem is in design). You just CANNOT beat Chinas product costs. It’s seriously impossible to do. Unless the gov’t starts imposing tarrifs on Chinese goods at a rate to offset the production costs, products like those AWDrifters shop makes are going to continue to move over there.
