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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYT: Falling Wages at Factories Squeeze the Middle Class
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/business/falling-wages-at-factories-squeeze-the-middle-class.html?referrer&_r=0
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and PATRICIA COHEN
NOVEMBER 20, 2014
For nearly 20 years, Darrell Eberhardt worked in an Ohio factory putting together wheelchairs, earning $18.50 an hour, enough to gain a toehold in the middle class and feel respected at work.
He is still working with his hands, assembling seats for Chevrolet Cruze cars at the Camaco auto parts factory in Lorain, Ohio, but now he makes $10.50 an hour and is barely hanging on. Id like to earn more, said Mr. Eberhardt, who is 49 and went back to school a few years ago to earn an associates degree. But the chances of finding something like I used to have are slim to none.
Even as the White House and leaders on Capitol Hill and in Fortune 500 boardrooms all agree that expanding the countrys manufacturing base is a key to prosperity, evidence is growing that the pay of many blue-collar jobs is shrinking to the point where they can no longer support a middle-class life.
A new study by the National Employment Law Project, to be released on Friday, reveals that many factory jobs nowadays pay far less than what workers in almost identical positions earned in the past.
Darrell Eberhardt, 49, an assembly line worker in Ohio, has seen his wages drop from $18.50 an hour to $10.50 an hour.
FULL story at link.
madville
(7,408 posts)I made anywhere from $8.50-12.50 an hour 20 years ago. I work for the federal government now and make $24.71 an hour but it really doesn't feel like that much more these days, still basically broke and paycheck to paycheck like always. I would be bankrupt trying to make it on $10 an hour these days.
Joe Turner
(930 posts)will never happen with the trade policies we have today. Unless and until we bring back tariffs and enact policies that encourage investment in manufacturing our manufacturing sector, what's left of it, will continue to shrink. All this "talk" at the WH of reinvigorating manufacturing, given their pro-free "whatever the shit happens" trade stance is so much political blather.
hack89
(39,171 posts)The problem is that it has shifted away from low tech man power intensive manufacturing to high tech highly automated manufacturering. They are not dependent on large numbers of workers.
Joe Turner
(930 posts)You state the obvious. Of course much of manufacturing is automated. As it should be. Trouble is, this country is out of entire industries such as consumer electronics, most computer related components, furniture, clothing, consumer products. Not to mention being a shadow of what we used to be in tool and die, autos, steel, ...the kind of work that would still exist if our trade policies put the interests of American works before the interests of corporations. Look at Germany today. Higher standard of living than the US, greatest exporter of manufactured goods, and has fully automated factories.
It is critical to have productive capacity here. When we make things here we control our destiny and create opportunities for people to learn important skills as opposed to flipping hamburgers.
KT2000
(20,577 posts)and holding companies have bought out lots of manufacturing businesses and moved those jobs overseas, mostly China. It has been a goldrush to decimate the American workforce for the huge payouts to the firms and their CEOs - like $47 million for just one CEO of a holding co. I am aware of.
Transfer of wealth.
KG
(28,751 posts)TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)In 1981 Reagan said that a "service economy" would be established. That was code for declining wages and weakening labor and the employment market. I was at DOL at the time and actually predicted as much at the time. A service economy is about low wages and job insecurity. Over the 34 years, the GOP and their business allies have accomplished their goal. The Democrat's mistake was not fighting back and Clinton pushing NAFTA that was a GOP negotiated deal, Obama's support of TPP is another miscalculation. And it is partly spurred on by corporate economic advisers who are pushing it. TPP is also a GOP deal.
The economy we have now is what the Bush years helped create. Obama's fault if any is NOT openly going against present business practices and pushing a LIBERAL pro worker agenda. Pushing a much higher minimum wage, putting up EFCA early in his first term and purging ALL GOPPER appointees from government and replacing them with labor people.
And most of all the Sherman Act should be broadly enforced against retailers like Walmart and the media.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)Democrats are a bourgeois party, just like the Republicans (albeit Dems are not fascists). It's a fools' errand therefore, imo, to expect Dems ever to advance the interests of the proletariat.
Basically, there are two factions of the bourgeoisie competing with each other to see which faction gets to control the Capitalist ship of state. One faction (Republican) is now overtly fascist and white supremacist and makes no bones about it; the other (Democrat) is less overtly hostile to workers' interests and the interests of people of color but, when push comes to shove, will invariably place the interests of private enterprise above the interests of labor.
Think about it this way: if Dems were really the party of the working class any longer, in 1981 they would have called a 'General Strike' when Reagan busted PATCO. That they did not says volumes and really all that needs to be said.
Is why, when I hear Republi-tards sneeringly call Obama a 'Socialist,' I reply that he's the 'worst Socialist in the history of recorded Socialism"' The funniest thing is they don't have the slightest idea what the fuck I'm talking about!
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)There should have been a general strike. The unions were divided and the Teamsters supported Reagan or at best stayed silent.
I remember well that other unions more or less stood by because a lot of traditional unions did NOT consider public worker unions one of them. That was a huge mistake and gave Reagan and his allies the go ahead to go after traditional unions. Add to that the Lane Kirkland was a weak union leader.
It all fell together for Reagan. And the Democrats who were in control of Congress gave him a lot of the agenda he put in place. Why they went lame is puzzling. The mistake was that the Dems thought they had to go with business for campaign funding when they should have stayed with workers.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)The middle class was destroyed by the bipartisan corporate coup.
The corporate media keeps pretending we still have a middle class, but all that wealth was stolen.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/20/middle-class-wealth-shrinks-1940s_n_6014874.html
No more corporatists and warmongers. NOTHING is more important than making sure we aren't force-fed another corporate viper as the Democratic nominee in 2016. Once the Third Way accomplishes that, the election is rendered meaningless in terms of direction of policy.
hollysmom
(5,946 posts)sorry always want to know. Did he vote for Reagan and Bush?