Many of the workers in the shop did not have much of a formal education, as a matter of fact many were lucky to have a high school diploma. The factories of Flint gave them an opprotunity to make a good living regardless of their education, and this was the case for many young workers up until the late 1960s to early 1970s. In the 1980s hard times came to Flint, shops were shut down and corporate greed started taking a toll on Flint. Once exclusive neighborhoods turned to slums as shops were shut down. Thousands were put on unemployment lines and many were on picket lines during the 1980s.
In the 90s Chevrolet began moving production from Flint plants and laying workers off. Such was the case with Buick city, the Fisher body plants, and the V8 plant. As GM has taken production out of Flint so was the life taken out of our city. And on a larger scale this is the case with our country. We are being forced out of being an industrial nation to a service industry nation. Jobs that once paid well and were organized are being sent away to countries that do not have labor laws and do not have labor unions to represent workers. What we get in return is jobs that pay little such as fast food jobs were we have to scrape to make ends meet, and that is with both spouses in a household working full time.
What effect has this had on our nation and our people? Our children raise themselves for one, which is causing our children to be more prone to be not only lazy but be undisciplined. Teenage pregnancy is on the rise, high school violence is the norm, and kids have no respect for anything. Why? Because both parents have to work twice as hard to survive, only to neglect the children they leave to raise themselves. The next effect is that we lose our stake in the one thing that made us a great nation is that we were the largest producer of goods in the world, but now we have to import because finding a true American made product is next to impossible.
NAFTA and offshoring has also helped eliminate many inside white collar job as well such as business accounting. Many large corporation are either using Indian companies to do their bookkeeping or even outsourcing to other countries for services such as tax preperation for consumers. This just goes to show that it is not only the person who punches a clock at the mill who is in danger. Any industry that is deemed overpaid can be sent to another country to be done by a foreigner who will work for less pay. This helps the big corporation make themselves look good to the high worth stock holders because it drives down their overhead costs making the company seem more profitable.
The case is if board members were being compensated less, and corporate officer perks were a little more realistic then many companies would be more profitable. Upper management in many corporations tend to pay themselves astronomical salaries and also give themselves stock bonuses that often exceed their salaries. This is even common practice for companies that tend to show losses year after year on the books, an example is Lucent Technologies. Lucent has shown a loss for several years after the tech bubble burst but yet the upper managers make well over 1 million dollars each and receive stock bonuses each year in excess of a million dollars in value. Why do they receive such pay and bonuses when the company is in the red?
It has always been the case that the guy who punches a clock for $30,000 or less a year is going to be the one who gets the axe first. God forbid a company would decrease an executive;s salary by a margin to keep an "expendable" worker employed. To the big corporations our nation is expendable since they can now look to developing nations such as China that are beginning to demand consumer goods more and more. And if that means abandoning the U.S. to save a few bucks to produce the same product even if it is of inferior quality they will do just that. American industry has turned it back on the people that made them what they are, and unfortunately consumers who buy these foreign made goods have not helped matters.
Another trend that has hurt American industry is the Walmart mentality that has taken over. People in the U.S. are willing to spend less for foreign goods than for American made products. Stores like Walmart cater to this fact, and offers imported merchandise that is inexpensive. This causes consumers to flock to buy these goods at Walmart and causes stores that cannot afford to offer such low prices to fall by the wayside. While we save a buck at Walmart we put another neighborhood business out of business. And the mosts sickening part of this process is not only are the Walmarts of the world pimping foreign goods they also employ companies to maintain their stores that have illegal immigrants working for them.
Now, I am not saying I have all of the answers to how we stop our jobs from leaving for good. I do have some ideas though. The first is to boycott companies that outsource to other nations. Don't support the companies that are taking your job from you, this includes Walmart. So you spend another buck or two for the same good at another store, at least you will be helping a local business stay in business. As far as cars go don't buy new, buy used. The one huge benefit is that you will not take as much of a loss in depreciation as someone who goes out and buys off the showroom floor. And if you do buy a new car then don't buy foreign, the demand for foreign cars has been a big reason why American companies have moved production to other countries to stay competitive.
Another way you can do something is to look at candidates for office who oppose offshoring, and to vote for American worker advocates. And the last action you can take is to vote against any act that eases trading laws beyond what NAFTA did, any new act that will come on the ballot in the future will be the death blow to American industry. People always believe that they can do nothing to make changes, but as a collective voice WE can.
