The product made in Mexico might be made with less expensive materials but why would you think that? Every line transfer I have ever seen starts off by using the exact same sources of supply. It is too risky to change raw material specifications at the same time you move an entire operation. Later on they might try to cost-reduce materials but why do you think the American Carrier factory was not already trying to cost reduce and substitute less costly materials?
Materials made in China or Mexico are not inferior just because of their location. It is true you have to manage their quality more closely and they are more likely to try and slip in a substitute for cost savings.
I am in agreement with you that relocations almost never give the savings promised by the sponsoring group within management. And some high-technology operations fail to transfer well. They can even be unwound, as we unwound moving some engineering tasks to Bangalore India because their engineers were so cheap. I donât think there is a conspiracy in the media to cover up these retreats. I think companies are not proud of making the mistakes in the first place and do not trumpet their reversals. But I also believe these retreats are rare.
There is a reason so many of American retails stores carry goods made overseas and China has become a real gorilla in the industry. With the right supervision, these products can and do get made well over there. Most smart phones are made there. Not much complaint about iPhone manufacturing quality, is there? And those are not simple devices to make well.
I think the most important point is that the people whoâs jobs arenât moving to mexico are the people who have actually received an actual raise (From 1978 to 2014, inflation-adjusted CEO compensation increased 997 percent) in the last 30 years. We should start moving the executives jobs overseas; those are the employees who are costing the companies the most money.
If I was a company that installed HVAC equipment, I would avoid installing Carrier equipment for the next three years. The first 1.5 years due to these workers having no real incentive to do quality work, and the other 1.5 years for the new factory to work out any initial problems with their operations and processes.
This sucks, but Iâm sure the TPP or NAFTA or some other damn thing is supposed to provide a pittance for these folks to spend at the University of Phoenix on retraining as network engineers. So theyâll probably land on their feet, right?
When I was a kid I wrote HTML for drkoop.com. Near the end, they called us all into the lunchroom and announced that they were laying half the company off. Once the people who lost their jobs had left the room (and the building; they had hired private security contractors and everything), management brought in a margarita machine and free t-shirts that said, âKoop Rocks!â for those of us who still had a job for the moment. That was a room with a weird vibe.
Executives are hard to find and hire, therefore they are expensive. Workers on the line are cheap and plentiful and therefore cheap. How do you get around that?
Iâm really not convinced they do anything apart from play golf with other executives they want the company to buy from or sell to.
Or pick and choose random business models from books written by former executives to form useless objectives to flow down to people actually doing the work.
Interesting, since a country change in the location of the factory will make the logistics of shipping raw materials very different, and sometimes well nigh impossible. Supply sources usually shift along with the move as a result. I have no idea why youâve never experienced that.
Because the quality of the product hasnât changed significantly in recent years, whereas the pay to the upper echelon has.
I very specifically did not say that.
So which is it: not inferior, or keep a close watch because theyâll try to make it inferior?
I donât think itâs a conspiracy either. Itâs just not well covered. At least partly because itâs probably harder to find out the facts, for the reason you state:
Hence my comment about having greater costs than optimistically projected due to the need for more training and supervising.
Iâm sure someone could find something wrong with worker ownership of a company. I think a more important question would be whatâs right with it?
Workers will support the community/environment they live and work in, etc.
I guess I have to claim fanboy on this one, I listen to R.D. Wolfe most weeks and am surely influenced by his ideas on capitalism/the âwesternâ economy. I think heâs pretty right on most of the time.
He frequently talks about a program he endorses (and may profit from?) that assists workers in buying out a company that is leaving their area.
Not creating an account?!!? tonight to check, but I think it may be here:
I havenât looked into it much, but wow, this video sure makes me feel like I should.
(Site no longer asks for login/sign-up. Because I got to it this time by searching âworker selfdirected enterpriseâ? Secret Wolff code of some sort?)
Iâm really bad about being critical when being preached to as a member of the choir. Iâd ask the more experienced, educated, discerning peeps on BBS: Is this guy a wolf in sheepâs clothing? Wait. ErmâŚ
One of the first duties congress was ever given is to impose tariffs on imports. They have practically abandoned that duty for a century now, it was the main source of federal income until 100 years ago when it was transferred to income(income that isnât even considered profit, your wages are not legally or logistically profit)⌠Combined with neoliberal âfree-tradeâ trade deals (nafta, tpp) that allows the absurdity of trade orgs like the WTO actually placing tariffs ON governments. We could easily and legally place tariffs on import to meet the same standards we expect within our borders.
I work in manufacturing in California. I remember part of one of my earlier jobs being to grind the âMade in Canadaâ markings off of a piece of angle iron included in our âMade in U.S.A.â product. We did extensive re-machining to the part after that, but it was âimportantâ we got that off of there first. Logistics will definitely effect where materials come from, but the market price can outweigh (already used the T work once tonight) shipping costs and even commitment to the quality of the product (I donât know much about, or have anything against Canadian steel). (Which I think is mostly due to ignoring externalities like pollution and resource consumption, traffic congestion from moving materials.)
Forgot where I was going with that. I certainly donât disagree with the quote I quoted; A business that will cut 1400 people and move to a different country wonât bat an eye buying their materials from the cheapest source. Just maybe the cheapest sources wonât be that much more expensive in Mexico vs where the business is currently.
Time for me to sleep, wake up, work. Then check BBS and be abhorred at how vocal Iâve been here tonight. - What happened to no posting online after drinking, ejconrad?
/edit: not enough parentheses. I think I at least closed them all.
It is such a shame that Americaâs most successful export appears to be greedy, psychopathic corporate shareholders. Over here, in Britain, they have managed to find themselves a comfortable bed with out politicians.
