Quote:
Originally Posted by SilentKnight
Meanwhile, our manufacturing industry has been completely decimated in the past decade. Every major manufacturing company in the area has closed shop and gone south. Former factory workers are now working 2-3 service/hospitality industry jobs at barely minimum wage to barely make ends meet - those fortunate enough to even find jobs.
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I can't speak for public sector unions but if you're implying that the private sector unions drove our manufacturing overseas i'd have to disagree with you. There's no competing with countries where manufacturing is completely unregulated in terms of polluting and destroying resources(no enviromental laws), exploiting workers(no labor laws), and no tax laws.
German and Japanese auto workers are both organized and both make more than American auto workers, yet all their auto manufacturers are doing fine while America's auto industry is near collapse. Why is that? America doesn't make cars for the global market for one, the best selling US car is a Ford F-150, i've never been to Europe but i'm sure not too many people are driving pick-up trucks over there. They also have nationalized healthcare which means that the companies aren't forced to bear the burden of healthcare costs. Don't believe the bullshit that right wing media likes to push about unions, most of it's false. The Southern states offer tax incentives for businesses to move down there, the land is cheaper and cost of living is cheaper. These so called business friendly states are in the same predicament as the northeast and midwest though, can't compete with the third world as far as manufacturing so the corporations use the unions as a scapegoat, and people eat that shit up because their jealous. So people say "fuck this guy, why is he making 65$ an hour and i'm only making 25$?" But instead of going after managament they go after their co-workers. It's a scab's mentality.
You can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
When free enterprise profit begins to affect the health of a country, where should we draw the line between businesses' rights to do as they wish, and limiting them when they wish to perform actions that will damage the country? If you are an American corporation drawing upon the excellent resources coming from being in America, you owe it to America and its citizens not to drain us by sending all the manufacturing and jobs to other countries. To do otherwise is cynically exploiting the US as a base while exploiting the cheap labor elsewhere. All around exploitation, while the CEO gets a $30 million golden parachute and ex-workers end up living in the streets. That's got to stop before we have nothing left.
We need to start putting up protectionist walls.