Motorola's New Smartphone: Made in the U.S.A., but Not for Much Pay

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/motorolas-new-smartphone-made-in-the-usa-but-not-for-much-pay/278270/



Today, Google-owned Motorola is officially announcing the new Moto X, an Android-powered device that, as its ads remind us, will be the first smartphone actually manufactured in the United States. Motorola is teaming with Flextronics to assemble the handsets at a former Nokia factory in Fort Worth, Texas, which will eventually employ somewhere around 2,000 workers.

In other words, we're all finally about to see what happens when a tech company actually tries to bring production back to the U.S. of A. from low-wage Asia, much as Apple is planning to do with some of its Macs, and how much the resulting new jobs will actually pay.

In some cases, it appears, the answer is not much. Flextronics seems to have kept mum about wages. But after a little bit of surfing around jobs boards, I was able to find some help wanted ads from a staffing company that don't leave a whole lot of questions about what factory they were headhunting for. (Here's a link to the one below.)


So at the lowest wrung, we're talking Walmart wages. For better-educated technicians and production leads, we're in a more middle-class pay range. There's no mention of benefits in the ads, but I'm not going to draw any hard conclusions from that.

[rurallib]

1. I see that it looks like one of those temp placement deals

so I doubt there is much if any benefits.
Also gets Motorola (Google) out of the messy work of handling humans.

[Owl]

2. It's a start, and it's a good thing.

[Lee-Lee]

4. I agree- this is progress, let's not just bitch about everything

Are the wages great? No, but it is better than no jobs and the stuff being made overseas.

Average peer capita wage for that area looks to be around 22k. Working 12 hour swing shifts means you average 2 hours overtime a week (it is really some more, some less, but that is the average).

That puts assemblers just below 21k. Not great, but for a job that requires zero skills or training to pay just under average wage for an area is not horrible either. And because the 12hr/swing shift type schedule has 12 off days per 28 day cycle there is opportunity to pursue side jobs or overtime if one wishes, or lots of recreation/volunteering time.

It is a start. Lets not just complain about it, lets accept that any movement to bring jobs back here is a good thing and now just work to move those wages up. It is a helluva lot easier to work to move wages up from an existing job than it is to create a $20/hr job from thin air.

[ceonupe]

3. Notice this is just assembly of mostly pre built parts

No actually manufacturing just assembly and packaging.

The real work is done overseas and all we get here is the lowend assembly.

This was just for a press release.

Wake me when the chips and screens and boards are made in the USA.

Right now all the important stuff is still done overseas and the only things being made in the USA are parts made almost entirely by machine/robot.

[Logical]

5. Wow, are we ever happy? WTF, would you rather have NO JOBS making them here? This...

is why liberals get a bad rap at times.