NAFTA/GATT HITS HOME!
The area if North Carolina where I live is the Central Peidmont which is roughly the center of the state more or less. We have taken an especially hard hit over the past several years in both the furniture and textile industries. Over all in the south, literally hundreds of plants have closed down, maybe counting all the small ones and satellite industries, the numbers would measure in the thousands. Unemployment in these industries in in the hundreds of thousands and is carrying over to other industries such as local trucking, other factories, business, and such. The general rule is that for every one who becomes unemployed, ten more will suffer directly or indirectly because of it.
I know for a fact that one of the most renoun furniture makers in the world, known for extreme quality is receiving containers of furniture every day from China. The exodus started years ago, first to Mexico, then the Phillippines, and now China.
The companies left standing, though many are very shaky, (this applies to textiles as I am not sure about the furniture factories) have either gone over to automation, are specialty companies producing such quality as you can't get overseas, or are using imported labor. These automated factories employ about one tenth of what would have been the normal workforce 20 years ago and are producing more and better. The rest are using cheap south of the border labor. Quality is gone for the most part, but the product is cheep.
This is leading up to a long conversation I had with my best friend recently. He was the VP over quality control in a furniture plant which moved to the Phillippines. He came home for Christmas break looking for another job. It seems his plant was again relocated...this time from the Phillippines to China to get even cheaper labor. He did not want to go there!
We discussed the factory closings and movings, labor, and other industry related items. One thing became clear from our conversation, we have shot ourselves in the foot.
It seems that our furniture (textiles could be included to some extent) have not modernized just as the steel mills and other industries did not. Furniture was essentially using the same technology in manufacturing they used 100 years ago to some extent. Ok, they use electric drills instead of hand drills and on and on, but for the most part, all too many of the plants were too out dated to compete and the owners failed to bring the plants into todays technology. Most old factories are just not set up to proficently manufacture goods in order to compete with foreign labor. They are too labor intensive which brings up another problem in this area...LABOR!
The labor issue is a cold two edge sword and a curse to manufacturing in our country. Our middle class skilled labor is unmatched anywhere in the world as far as production and quality go. Our "skilled craftsmen", such as wood carvers are the best also, but, they are just too expensive to employ when compared to foreign craftsmen.
A big problem with labor in America is the "payday to quitting time" employees. When you hire them, the first thing they say when is payday and what time is quitting time. They are in all too many cases too sorry to put in a good days work. Any personnel director will tell you that in some jobs, usually the unskilled type, you best hire 16 if you need 12, that way, you will always have enough to do the job. In other words, they fail to show up for work a lot. This is especially true with young men who seem to have far more important things to do, rather than work 5 or 6 days a week. It is also true with the social services for lunch bunch who have it figured down to the hour how much they can work vs. how much earned income credit they can get on their tax returns.
The labor problem we have is a receipe to destruction for our businesses and the attitued of some, nay, even many employees that the world owes them a living, that it don't matter whether or not they show up for work or not, quality is not in their vocabulary, and the "rich" man who in all too many cases is just a middle class bussinessman trying to survive, is ripping them off by not paying them more, therefore they won't half way work.
On the other hand, among those who will actually preform on the job, their skills are unmatched in the world. My friend told me that in the Phillippines, you had to hire twice an many people to do the work and stand over them constantly to make sure it was done properly. They haven't a clue to the quality goods which are demanded in this country because they have lived on so much poverty, middle class Americans are the super rich to them. Riches to them is something we would throw away even among our poor!
Now back to his former companies move to China... Living and working in the Phillippines for someone of his income level is awsome. His living expenses are met by the company leaving him bunches of money for other things. Wine or in this case Rum, women, and song for the single man. A literal vacation...nice climate...nice people...laid back way of life...It's Jimmy Buffett time. China on the other hand is a backward place in most cities, towns, or villages with little of the bright lights and fun of the Phillippines. China is a heavily regulated society where the taboos are many and freedoms are few. Then you get to the labor situation there.
The laborers in China are paid little, have few skills, and even more than others in foreign nations, have no conception of quality control. My friend said the plants worked constantly and he would have to be putting in 17 or 18 hour days. This is not his style, I know, I trained him in furniture sales 30 years ago. You have to literally stand over the Chinese to get the quality goods you need plus it takes about 3 times, maybe four, of the people you would use in America to do the same thing. They just work so cheep, it don't matter if it is 10 times the number of people.
My friend also noted near the close of our conversation that the businesses will be back someday. He said the quality was just not there like it would be if Americans produced it and sooner or later, the lack of quality would bite all the companies on the rear. I saw this happen with one of the largest textile companies, they moved their yarn manufacturing to Mexico and ended up closing the plants down and buying from American yarn companies because they couldn't get the quality yarn they had to have from the Mexican workers.
Americans in our greed for more possessions have embraced being able to get cheap foreign goods which lack quality, so we can have more and more. No watches are made here anymore, I am talking about real watches you wind up...DUH! There are few companies compared to years ago which make shoes, all our electronics are made somewhere else, more due to enviromental laws than anything else. Even our military BDU's are made overseas which is why you saw so many of our soldiers in the green BDU's instead of the desert brown ones, which made them stand out really big time in the desert of Iraq. Reason...you can't call overseas and get an overnight job done like American BDU factories did. This attitude supporting cheap foreign goods is biting us hard and will bite harder before it is over.
I still ask, who will buy these foreign goods when all of us are out of work, or is that the plan? Will we even be here as a nation to buy these goods if the NWO crowd has their way? I have been out of work for almost four months, stupidly leaving a good job I had for years, thinking with my skills I could go anywhere. It was then I saw first hand the destruction of NAFTA and GATT on our economy. I could move to another area, change professions, even start a business (not in this economy), but I think I may just go fishing for a while.
