I saw this commercial on TV and thought of Tom (Caymen)

[Mike Wilson]

Stay Union, Stay Strong, Stay United, for the American Way of Life...



wlukus,

Let us just say a prayer for TJR, and others like him, when, in the 2007 U.A.W. Contract

Negotiations,"Big Auto" forces us to give back wages, cost-of-living, health-care, and other

hard-earned benefits, and persons like him are set to wonder "What the Hell Happened ?"

to our (my) standard of living. Like I said, TJR, Government and Big Business is always

looking for a way to outsource our (YOUR) job to China or India!!!

Don't think for a minute that the big businesses in this country are going to give back

any concessions, to the buying public, in the form of rebates, lower prices, or betterment

on goods or services. It's all going to go into the "Fat Cat's " pockets!

Lord, this is common sense, why cain't some of y'all see it!!!:angry:

 

[Mike Wilson]

R Shek,

Skipped straight down to a reply for your post, skipping several others.

Site-Specific...? Can't Do It? 50/5075%?



Join the crowd with their jobs going to China and/or India. (You will see!)

You think you are immune, think again!!!

 

[C B]

Can we argue about PUBLIC employee unions next?

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Tracnblack spouts more doom and gloom and says:

Like I said, TJR, Government and Big Business is always looking for a way to outsource our (YOUR) job to China or India!!!

And, yet, I am not scared! Go ahead! Let them do it. As a small business owner I CONSTANTLY look for ways to reduce my overhead and deliver goods and services to my customers more cheaply so that I can maximize my profits. As long as I, the government and businesses do the same, legally, what is wrong with that?



Unless, of course, you are one of those that wants to be complacent, and stay in the same job for 40 years then retire just because you recognize you probably can't learn a new trade, and can't move on to do other things.



Me, well I am NOT one of those. I thrive on change and like to be doing something different every 5 to 8 years. I don't live in fear and it's quite liberating.



I actually feel sorry for those that live with such fear.



TJR

 

[Bill Lukus]

Q



I'l agree that the employment numbers look good. Keep in mind that now when you run out of unempoyment benifits you are taken off the graph but still do not have a job. The REAL issue is that the new jobs that are created pay much less. ( UNDER EMPLOYMENT )Again most of the jobs that are lost are not union ! They are better paying jobs than the new ones at Walmart.







The Economic Policy Institute reports wages in the industries in which jobs are being created are, on average, 21 percent lower than wages in those industries in which jobs are disappearing. In addition, expanding industries are less likely to provide workers with health insurance than industries cutting jobs. EPI also found jobs losses are hitting higher-paid manufacturing occupations even harder.Unions account for 7.8% of these jobs.

 

[Tom Schindler]

I'l agree that the employment numbers look good. Keep in mind that now when you run out of unempoyment benifits you are taken off the graph but still do not have a job.

I wonder what the "real unemployment" numbers really are.





Tom

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Regarding "running out of benefits", why is that always the counter-argument used to dismiss the favorable unemployment statistics that come out under the current administration?



New initial jobless claims has always been the leading unemployment indicator...it's been that way for decades. That that are questioning this indicator's validity NOW seem to have an agenda IMHO, almost as if they are trying to make things seem worse then they are?



I personally don't know of ANYONE who has lost a job and hasn't been able to get another.



TJR

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Again, Q, bringing facts and hard statistics into an emotional debate. Shame on you!

 

[Bill Lukus]

TJR

In the early 90's the unemployment #'s were changed to show people collecting benifits and not people out of work.



Fact This !! And read slowly so you understand.

Two different sources say the same thing. Job loss and new jobs paying less .Q as I said before union jobs are being lost. Less than 8% of the labor force is Union. The majority of lost jobs are non-union.



Growing trade deficits and job losses

In the past, NAFTA's impact in the United States was often obscured by the "boom-and-bust" cycle that drove domestic consumption, investment, and speculation in the mid- and late 1990s. Between 1994 (when NAFTA was implemented) and 2000, total employment rose rapidly in the United States, causing overall unemployment to fall to low levels. But unemployment began to rise early in 2001, and 2.7 million domestic jobs were lost between February 2001 and May 2003 (BLS 2005). Employment began to recover thereafter and finally exceeded the previous peak level of employment in January 2005. Although the national labor market has begun to recover, manufacturing employment absorbed the brunt of the job losses in the recession and has continued to stagnate. Since the beginning of the 2001 recession, 2.8 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, a decline of 16.8%. Growing trade deficits are responsible for 34% to 58% of this decline in manufacturing employment (Bivens 2004). As job growth has stumbled, the underlying problems caused by U.S. trade deficits have become much more apparent, especially in manufacturing.



The growth of exports to Mexico and Canada since NAFTA took effect stimulated domestic productions that supported 941,459 U.S. jobs, as shown in Table 1. However, the growth of imports displaced domestic production that supported 1,956,750 jobs. Changes in trade led to a net loss of 1,015,290 jobs between 1993 and 2004.









NAFTA and Workers' Rights and Jobs (2004 )



The central focus of pro-NAFTA campaigning was the issue of U.S. job creation, so it is fair to measure NAFTA's real-life results against its backers' expansive promises of hundreds of thousands of new, high-paying U.S. jobs. However, even measured against the more lenient "do no harm" standard, NAFTA has been a failure. Using trade flow data to calculate job loss under NAFTA (incorporating exactly the formula used by NAFTA's backers to predict 200,000 per year NAFTA job creation) yields net job destruction numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Whether the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs qualifies as "a giant sucking sound" depends on the ear of the listener. It is clear, however, that NAFTA has indisputably led to widespread job loss, with over 412,177 U.S. workers certified as NAFTA casualties under just one narrow government program. The fact that job growth totally unrelated to NAFTA has produced a net gain in U.S. employment during this period in no way changes the reality that NAFTA has cost large numbers of individual workers their jobs,­ most of whom are now unemployed or working at jobs that pay less than the ones they lost.



The U.S. economy created jobs at a fairly rapid rate in the 1990s, but without NAFTA, hundreds of thousands of full time, high wage, benefit-paying manufacturing jobs would not have been lost. It is also important to note that while the U.S. economy is generating substantial numbers of new jobs in absolute terms, the quality of the jobs created is often poor. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that the professions with the greatest expected future growth in the U.S. are cashiers, waiters and waitresses, janitors and retail clerks. These and other lower-wage service jobs are the kind that will most likely be available to workers displaced by NAFTA.



Economic surveys of dislocated workers shows that the jobs lost to NAFTA, in many cases high-paying manufacturing jobs, are, in the majority of cases, replaced by lower-paid employment.

 

[Nelson Atwell]

Union workers don't lose jobs. They just go into the job bank drawing 90% of their paychecks while they sit over in the union building taking basket weaving classes.

 

[Mike Wilson]

TJR and Q,



Yo-Ho-Ho! for the minimum wage "service-sector" jobs and "boo-hoo" for the good

Union/Bargianed Jobs! I see what you are saying, Do YOU!!!



85% of the new jobs created under the NAFTA, and now CAFTA "Globilization/

Free Trade Agreement " have been Non-Union, Minimum (or less) Wage jobs that

have under-cut the American Way of Life, and the Middle-Class.



Oh, and as far as "Getting an Education?"...



I have a Four Year Degree, with a Two-Year Apprenticeship in Automotive Technology

from (the old) M.I.T., (Michigan Institute of Automotive Technology and Design), Two

Years in English Communications and Studies from U of M (Go BLUE!), and have written

one "paper" on "Future Suspension Technology" in relation to "Full-Frame -vs-Unit Body

Construction", and where are we now, with that! (I wrote that back in 1985!).



As I have said before, I have an entire pocket full (verbatim) of "I Told You So's"

Ready to hand out to the first available taker!!!

 

[walter clark]

I honestly dont delive that having or not having unions is any longer an issue anymore. Even without a union negotioted high wage for unskilled workers the standard manufacturing wage in the US is so high compared to places like china. An open market sounds like a good idea and isolationism is not the anwser but there has to be some measure in place to even out the ballence when trading with contries with such massive varience in loabor costs. Also rember that most of these contries dont play with the same rule book as us (democratic goverment, socical systems and fair labor laws). If we are to loose jobs to contries that pratice things like child and forced prison labor mabe we need to fight fire with fire. Take our prison population and put them in factories and force them to work to pay for there upkeep. These prison plants can inturn produce marketable items that would directly compeate with products no longer produced in the us because of the strain of labor costs. The law abiding tax payer would then become share holders in these goverment owned companyies and use the profits to help reduce tax burdens for the US citizen population. Mabe then my kids next toy in there happy meal will be stamped on back "made in the USA" . I also belive though that alot of US companies that have moved offshore just for boosting profit margins should have a responsability to its founding home and be required to keep a selectet percentage of its opperations domestic. I realy dont know alot about economics but as a skilled blue collor worker I do feel the growing pressure and am concerned about our future. A countrey cannot base its whole economy on service sector jobs alone.

 

[Tom Schindler]

A countrey cannot base its whole economy on service sector jobs alone.

Walter,



I can not agree with you more. Here is something that I think most people are missing. As a world power, the USA, we are the "target" of many people and countries. Some we know of and many we have no clue about. Of course, the one we don't know of is pure speculation, but it is important none-the-less.



A world power, as a service country alone, will not be able to remain a world power. Countries like the Bahamas that base their economy on tourism is good at it because they have relatively little to offer in other goods.



The USA can offer a wide range of goods. If we decide to ship the steel industry, rubber industry, etc. to other countries, during a time of conflict, where are we going to get out steel to build tanks and ships? If we let our auto industry die, where will we get our vehicles for the soldiers to drive while in the battle?



We can not rely on any other country during a war. We have out allies, but our friends today do not always remain our friends forever. For all we know, China could be our next war. It also could be N. Korea, or Iran. If Iran is selling oil to China and India and if we buy steel from China and India, Iran attacks us, we will have to attack. China can not expect to sell us steel, if they need oil from Iran. How are we, as a country, supposted to fight to protect our homeland without steel to build tanks, ships, and guns?





Tom

 

[Thomas Rogers]

wlukus said:

Fact This !! And read slowly so you understand.

Sorry, I stopped reading at the first insult. Too bad this board doesn't have an ignore function.



TJR

 

[Nelson Atwell]

It does -- just hide off-topic discussions in the preferences.



I know what you mean though, there are a few people I wouldn't mind ignoring.

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Yeah, I know Nelson, but this site wouldn't be have as much fun without OT.

 

[Ryan Schaecher]

Site-Specific...? Can't Do It? 50/5075%?

:huh::huh:



WTF is this?



While I agree that having a manufacturing sector of the economy is of vital importance to the safety and security of the country, if left the to the liberals and the judges, it wouldn't matter anyway.



I expect that Judges will soon rule that war is unconstitutional and therefore having a military is as well. We can't interrogate a terrorist. We can't listen in on calls originating overseas. We have to give enemy combatants the same rights (probably even more rights) as US citizens have. What does it matter anymore if we can build our own planes and guns?



Which of course is all tounge-in-cheek.



We will never lose our manufacturing sector completely. If in a time of war China et al who own our steel mills won't sell to "war time manufacturers" the government will take control. It's happened before. Look at the war-time ramp-up in manufacturing that occured after Pearl Harbor. It may take some time, but in the case of an all-out non-nuclear war, we will be able to produce. In case of a nuclear war.... does it really matter?