Chris,
SNIP
>
>I completely agree that it can be good to consider the well-being of your town when making business decisions. He had the right to move his plant overseas, the same as he had the right to keep it in the states.

This is the nub of the issue as I see it (business today in general and free trade most particularly) - it all exclusively about "rights". 'Right' (as in proper, not as in the opposite to left) and moral issues are totally by the board in this business climate, usurped by "it is within the law as we read it and so we can do it". I want to use a simple but unrelated example to illustrate the point... here in Ontario our laws related to issuing driver's licenses did not state overtly that the person seeking the license to drive had to be the one actually taking the driving test. So a certain cultural group made extensive use of surrogate drivers for the driving test, the surrogate answering to the name of the applicant when called for their turn and knowing that nothing had to be signed specifically regarding the taking of the driving part of the procedures. It was clear to anyone that the intent of the laws was that the person applying for the license was to be the one taking the driving test. But since it didn't say so explicitly, thousands got their licenses that way before the "loophole" was closed. It only became a loophole once people started dissecting every word of every agreement/law/regulation.
Now that communism has disappeared as a threat, businesses have taken whole-hog to compliance with theletter of the law and not with the spirit of the law. And they certainly have no more requirement to ensure that capitalism 'tastes' better than communism. In fact they have proven adept at applying the more profitable aspect of communism. They can't do much of that here, but they have no problems doing so offshore.


>Either way, if he patents the Polartec process, his company thrives, and his employees have much better job security. But he didn't. Whose fault is that?

It really is conjecture that this logic is sound. Patents have been ripped of regularly by offshore companies, and I bet there's a good chance that the same might have occurred there. So he might well have ended up paying a bunch of lawyers to fight the crap and even gone broke earlier. Who knows?

>
>It is not simply $3.00 vs. $20.00 a day. Most articles I have read have indicated that the US worker is the most productive worker in the world. But some are pricing themselves out of the market. I know that here in Louisville the union kept pushing GE and kept pushing. GE said it may move the production to Mexico. The union kept pushing. And GE said fine, we're moving. The wage GE was willing to pay American workers was much, much higher than the wage they were going to pay the Mexican workers, but it wasn't enough for the union.

Sure articles state that U.S. workers are the most productive in the world. But just how does that square with companies moving offshore or down south in droves??? About the same way as the reported inflation rate relates to the actual cost of living if you ask me. They don't!
No matter how it's sliced, dirt cheap wages, minimal benefits and safety regulations, non-existent environmental laws, low/no taxes and a myriad of other cost factors make offshore attractive regardless.
You know far more about that GE situation so I must defer to you on that. But if it didn't happen this contract, it would have the next.
I'm curious as to what your solution to that problem would have been. Take a significant wage cut? Would that include cancellation of existing pension obligations?... Of medical insurance promises?...Of any other thing that costs thecompany money? Given any of those, why would any worker, unionized or not, agree? really? They would be headed quickly to the wage level of the Mexican/offshore worker. This is good for their family or their town or the country. Is this good for the ecomomy?

>
SNIP
>
>You could be right. How about a teacher with a Masters? Think they make more than a lot of the plant workers? Let's see: 5 years of school, and they still make less. How about nurses? My sister is a nurse: 4 years of school. Still makes less than a lot of the union workers at GE. The union negotiated great salaries when things were in their favor. Now they are not.

A couple of points here...
It ain't necessarily so that factory workers are all high-school drop-outs. And even it they are, the company did hire them, so it wasn't as much of a problem for them then as it is for you now.
The company did negotiate those wages that appear excessive now - now that the landscape is different. Those weren't bad business decisions then, for either side. Moving offshore was not an option until, really, after communism fell. While this opened up opportunities for the companies, it actually did nothing of benefit for the worker. For years now most workers have taken no wage increase, often even cuts, while companies returned to profitability then had profits rise and rise. Then when the workers said they wanted their piece of the pie back, management said "how 'bout NO PIE, dough-head?". The workers went without for several years, then the company told them to stick it, and you say they did it to themselves? At least grant that management was given opportunities that the workers didn't have, that management did not keep their end of the (implied) bargain (when profits are back, wages will get back to normal) and that management had ALL the marbles and did take them away rather than play. You can't call it a 'game' when one side makes all the rules and all you can ever do is lose.

>
SNIP
>
>No, not criticized. I am a firm believer that people should choose their own lives. They have chosen not to get an education. That was there choice. And I have no problem with that. Too each his own. But you can't turn around and complain about not having a great job when every teacher, guidance counselor, etc. told you to get an education. I have no problem with people who don't go to college. I do have a problem with people who don't go to college and then complain about not being given a great job with great pay. Who ever said that was guaranteed to anyone?

A Ph.D. who chose to be a teacher made a decision. Your sister chose to be a nurse. Both knew the wages they were likely to be able to make.
You are so sure that these factory workers are all uneducated. A bit arrogant, don't you think? And as I said, they were good enough for the company to hire them at one time. The companies even valued their work and trained them further and promoted them. All along, at least until the early 1990s, companies DID 'guarantee" good jobs for life to its factory workers. They had to to keep them. They encouraged that family members joined the company. They held summer picnics and Santa came with nice gifts for the kids every year. Believe me, the companies have more guilt in this situation than any of the workers. Then they tossed them like so much shit.

There are all kinds of people who have more money than you or I will ever see, yet they have no college education. Entertainment, sports and business are full of them. By the thousands.
>
>If someone tells me that if I want a good job with good pay, I should get an education, and I choose not to, whose fault is it when I don't get a good job with good pay?

As I said, factories encouraged fathers to have their sons (and later, daughters too) join the company. You had a highly competitive environment for high school graduates and the factories won their share of them.
There was a time, you know, that factory work was considered good work! In fact one was often considered lucky to have landed a job at a factory! Now it is deeply frowned upon. Uneducated second=class citizens who are getting what they deserve. No fault attributable to the company. No consideration given to the worker's contribution to making the U.S. the strongest country in the world. Now just dirt under the fingernails of "progress".
It's really gonna be a bad situation when we don't MAKE anything any more, and we don't create anything (like systems and programs) either. It's only a matter of time before the developer has the same community standing as you now attribute to the factory worker. I'll be surprised if it takes even 10 years, given the power that business now wields over government. Business runs it all and "the people" have no say. I'm not anxious to see how that's gonna work out!

>
SNIP
>
>The union did it to themselves. They had great salaries and benefits for a long time. GE was still willing to pay them more than the Mexican workers. It wasn't enough for the union, so GE did what it said it was going to do.

And just what was the union's alternative again?? Give and give and give and give 'til there was nothing left to give so the company moved out anyway? I'm betting that "more than the Mexican workers" was still less than yesterday's wage. So this proves the U.S. worker's higher productivity?
GE had an alternative, the union didn't. GE held all the cards. You could say that the union elected death with dignity rather than continuous hemmoraging that was going to lead to death anyway.

>
>If I am negotiating with a client who says they are going to hire some programmers from India because my price is too high, then I don't come down, and the client ends up hiring the programmers from India, who is to blame?

Not quite the same. You do have, at least for the moment, an alternative. There are other clients who will not (yet) consider overseas workers. But when the day does come, will you REALLY see it as reasonable that you should now be paid less when, in fact, you are actually more valuable than ever before??? And will you be happy that the same happens contract after contract until you are earning the same as a burger-flipper? When you, and everyone around you, has no money to spend to even keep life uneventful, let alone enjoy some of the pleasures of life, will that be fine with you?
Oh, you've got the degree so you will be able to adapt. But the question is, to what? There'll be nothing left to work at that doesn't have thousands of over-qualified people trying get that work. And what will that desireable work be able to pay when people only have burger-flip wages to start with? An electrical utility sounds like it may have some future, but at what rate can they sell their electricity when people only have so much money to buy it with?

SNIP
>
>I swallowed our local paper, the Courier-Journal's, view. And it leans very left. I do know for a fact that they were willing to pay the American workers more than the Mexican workers. GE was losing $30 on every refrigerator it made. So, what is your solution? Continue to lose money?

Figure don't lie, but liers can figure. My bet is that they only started "losing money on fridges" when they considered the theoretical cost of production in Mexico. And I take it that the U.S. worker might well have been offered $10 per day.
Jack Welch, the former Chairman of GE, was famous for stating that you are not doing any worker a favour by carrying on a money-losing business [I even agree with the general principle]. So I've just gotta believe that the factory in question couldn't have escaped Mr. Welch's eye.
I can gaurantee you this: I can show that any product can be made cheaper somewhere else. The trouble is, that shouldn't be the ONLY factor in the equation. Prior exploitation and social impact and economic impact all need to be included in these equations, but since the demise of communism it has become acceptable - indeed fashionable - to exclude them.
>
SNIP
>
>Anyone who believes that their job is secure is ducking their head into the sand. Job security is a joke. The only solution is to pay attention to the market, develop your skills, and make yourself attractive to employers. Or, go into business for yourself. Again, there are few guarantees in life. And having a great job with great pay is not one of them.

Well we do need to get back to the situation where there is a high level of "job security"!
I agree that it is a joke today.
Now those factory workers DID keep their skills attractive to their employers. It didn't help them. You can write it off to greed and lack of eduacation. My case is that they were gerviously misled by their employers. Led to the slaughter as it were.
Job security in its present form (i.e. none) costs far more in the long run than real job security ever would cost.
You have the unscrupulous who try to maintain some semblance of job security by keeping things to themselves, by not documenting things, by mis-documenting things and a host of other devious means. These are not helpful to any company.
You have a total lack of "institutional memory", so comapnies go down roads AGAIN that have already proven fruitless in the past. The lack of memory ensures that they go right ahead and make the same mistakes again rather than learning from their mistakes (and possibly succeeding this time). The lack of memory also ensure inconsistency of policies and directives and the reasons therefore in the first place
>
SNIP
>I think unions negotiate just like big, bad companies do. When they push too hard and overstep themselves, they pay for it. Just the say as companies who push unions too far, and who lose millions of dollars when the union strikes. In the end, like any negotiation, you better have an accurate assessment of your abilities.

Well I understand that the adversarial system of union negotiation is peculiar to North America. I'd sure like to see a different model tried, at the very last.
But as long as the company can threaten to move offshore on a strict profitability basis, ignoring history/social/local-economic fators, no system is going to work anyway! The very first thing that it needed, and quite possibly the only thing, is to restore considerations of history and social and economic impact into the equation.
My thinking is that this means an end to "free trade" as it is today - capitalism on a bender, leading to mass destruction of our entir way of life.
Trade can continue to be "free", but the movement of jobs must be scrutinized for all-around good and not just a few more bucks profit,

>
SNIP
>
>I don't despise unions. I just don't have a lot of sympathy for groups who try to overstate their position, then whine when the other side calls their bluff.

I expect we'll both be whining sooner than we think, when what happend at GE and countless other factories starts happening in our line of work too. It's there in its infancy now, and can only grow. Nike showed the way for factories, and some other company is clearing the way right now for the system development business. Count on it, because all that matters is PROFIT.

Phewwwww.