
Becoming a Steelworker Liberated Her, Then Her Job Moved to Mexico - wallflower
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/14/us/union-jobs-mexico-rexnord.html
======
Mz
_At a factory where black and white workers bowled together on Tuesday nights,
where at least two romances crossed racial lines, a subtle divide emerged:
Many white men like John refused to train and shunned those who did; many
black men like Mark openly volunteered.

The white workers who did agree to train tended to do so quietly, and kept it
a secret as long as they could, said Jim Swain, Shannon’s supervisor.

Some white men complained that they’d watched their economic prospects decline
for decades. They had shared their jobs with black men, then with women. Now
that blacks and women were welcomed in every facet of factory life, the jobs
were moving to Mexico. It seemed like proof that their best days were behind
them._

This has to be one of the most concise, insightful summaries of the roots of
things like racism and sexism that I have ever seen. And it is surprisingly
evenhanded and sympathetic to the white men that are so often maligned.

I don't know how we solve this. But, I think you have to start with having
compassion for the fact that many "overprivileged assholes" are scared of
losing the security they have worked so hard for, that they thought would be
relatively permanent if they did the right things.

How do we create a society in which all people can expect some baseline
security instead of squabbling over who to leave out? This is perhaps a
strange question to ask in a discussion about a factory closing in the US and
moving to Mexico. Or perhaps not.

I especially appreciated the part of the article that elucidated that the
Mexicans had not realized they were taking the jobs of the Americans who were
training them. The ending is perhaps supposed to be a downer. The headline
certainly is. But the last paragraphs indicate her daughter got scholarship
money and many of the workers went on to get other jobs.

That isn't to downplay what a big problem this is for Shannon, nor to dismiss
the very real issue the plant closure represents across the US.

~~~
nickik
The problem is that even if you provide security, people are unhappy with
living on the cost of others. People need to feel useful, having a job is
about more then just getting a roof and food.

~~~
krapp
>People need to feel useful, having a job is about more then just getting a
roof and food.

Unfortunately for people, having a job is not even about that.

Jobs are for you, an employee, to provide value to a company in exchange for
whatever the market determines your labor is worth. Not to provide you with a
sense of satisfaction, or dignity, or even enough money to afford a roof and
food.

If your job can provide you with those things, then you're lucky. But as the
global economy moves beyond the need to sustain itself on human labor, it
makes less and less sense to expect employment to fulfill societal needs, or
even basic human needs.

------
fzeroracer
The American Dream has been for many years to own a nice piece of property and
work your way up the corporate chain at a single company until you die. Both
of which have been radically shifting as technology improves productivity and
global competition becomes more of a major factor. We see people stuck in this
mindset that a job will last you forever (and in many cases there are still
towns where there is only One Company and One Job) and as a result have been
put in a lose-lose situation.

Meanwhile, other nations have a more flexible workforce that are cheaper to
pay for roughly the same productivity in many cases.

Unfortunately there is no easy solution for this problem. For the people
located in areas where jobs have entirely vanished you would have to relocate
the population but that goes against the dream. You could cut regulations in
order to entice companies to come back, but then you're selling the lives and
well-being of the American people for jobs that Americans might not even do
(see: labor shortages in the farm industries).

America will need to find a way to handle this and fast as automated cars
enter the market and cut another huge swathe out of the market. The difference
there though is that you can't blame other races or countries for taking your
jobs.

~~~
erentz
> For the people located in areas where jobs have entirely vanished you would
> have to relocate the population but that goes against the dream.

Relocate them where? American's are incredibly mobile in my experience, from
going to college in another state, to having families sprawled across
different states. If it were as simple as moving, people would be doing it.

> You could cut regulations in order to entice companies to come back...

Times have changed and we need to adjust to it. USA Inc makes a huge amount of
money. In the past that required a lot of people in the workforce. Today it
doesn't require nearly as many but we're making even more money! So the
solution is not to remove regulation to have more people taken advantage of in
dangerous factories and so we can pollute our environment. That does not
benefit the Americans who live here who do not have jobs.

We need to come to an acceptance of the changing times and decide what it
means to still have a society. Either we agree that we (USA Inc) make more
than enough money for everyone in the country to have a good life (which we
do), and work out the redistribution problem (which could take many forms), or
we continue as we are with a whole lot of fellow citizens suffering
needlessly.

~~~
neuro_imager
"We need to come to an acceptance of the changing times and decide what it
means to still have a society. Either we agree that we (USA Inc) make more
than enough money for everyone in the country to have a good life (which we
do), and work out the redistribution problem (which could take many forms), or
we continue as we are with a whole lot of fellow citizens suffering
needlessly."

As a foreigner living in the USA I'm sad to say that I both agree
wholeheartedly with this comment and realise that it can never come to pass.

The entire political landscape of the US is built on ideological caricatures
like the strong, independent, free American and the demon of socialism (or
anything that even vaguely represents it).

The unfortunate consequence of this is a society sorely lacking in social
concern with massive impediments to developing core infrastructure. Of course
this benefits the ruling class who don't have to spend money on developing
facilities that could benefit the lives of Americans.

------
bartart
The job was important for this woman who needed to pay for her daughter's
college and granddaughter's disease. Now the job goes to someone in Mexico who
might also need it to pay for their daughter's college or granddaughter's rare
disease. Is there a plan to help these Americans? People like Trump or Sanders
seem to want some sort of forced reshoring, which is essentially taking the
job away from the Mexican worker to give it back to the American one. But how
is that fair?

~~~
elboru
Well I guess it will depend on where you draw the empathy line. Some people
care only about themselves, they will look after themselves, if they have to
choose they will always pick the option that benefits them.

Then you have the people who only care about themselves and their family, I
guess a good percentage of the population will choose in favor of their family
rather than someone's else.

Then people empathize with those who share things in common with them
(culture, ideology, social status, race, nationality, religion) a kind of
extended family.

Then you have people who think we should empathize with everyone around the
world, but do they really?, if there was a chance where they have to decide
between their children or some random dude in the other side of the world, who
would they choose to help?

Is it fair? I don't think so. Would I rather help people who I empathize with?
I would lie if I say no. I'm not a monster , I don't want a random guy to
suffer, but there's something inside me that makes me look after my family
first.

P.S. I'm from Mexico, and I live in a city whose economy depends on foreign
manufacturing companies.

~~~
leereeves
There's also this:

If every country has its own economy, there will be far more companies and
jobs than if only a few multinational companies exist in the entire world.

~~~
closeparen
Why country? Why not state, county, city, neighborhood, or block? If
subdividing the economy creates good jobs, then we should do it as much as
possible.

National protectionism has the same problems as state or city level import
restrictions would, just at a different scale: you're throwing away
comparative advantage, wasting time and capital duplicating others' work (so
this time and capital is no longer available to unsolved problems), etc.

~~~
blfr
_National protectionism has the same problems as state or city level import
restrictions would_

No, it usually doesn't. There are benefits of scale but there are also
diminishing returns.

Having, say, a steel mill in every town would be a huge waste but centralizing
all steel production in one place on the globe would provide only a very
minor, if any, benefit over doing it in fifty countries at the massive hidden
cost of now world-wide fragility of steel supply. (This almost happened with
hard drives.)

~~~
closeparen
The world's countries have drastically different scale. If we are concerned
with the point of diminishing returns on industrial economies of scale, aren't
those the same everywhere? Shouldn't large countries be partitioning into
several economic zones, while small countries unify, into groups of about the
same size?

------
brohoolio
One thing I picked up on was that the plan to move production to Mexico was to
save 30 million dollars. The CEO's compensation was 40 million

~~~
Consultant32452
It took him 6 years to make that $40 million. It's not clear the timeline on
that $30 million. For all we know it could have saved the company $30 million
a year.

~~~
kabulykos
The old CFO at my firm was awarded the first year of annual cost-cutting
savings as his bonus. Executive comp can be weird, but at a public company
it's probably not a loss-leader.

------
a-dub
1) Bravo to the Times for dressing up rural realities in terms that urban
elites can understand. It's cool to care about gender equality and all, but it
don't make much difference if nobody has any work.

2) Computer people complaining about efforts to repatriate factory work is
pretty hilarious. You do realize where this whole industry is headed don't
you? I mean no other industry is better suited for it, as tooling gets better,
and links around the world get faster, it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly
to the cheapest place on earth to do it.

~~~
tim333
>it will be _the_ fastest sector to fly to the cheapest place on earth to do
it.

Software outsourcing has been a thing for decades now and if anything seems
past its peak as people find their programmers in Bangalore don't actually do
as well as they hoped.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Companies have been burned by outsourcing production to India where they
didn’t get the quality they wanted and cultural differences are difficult.
However, companies have gradually had more and more countries to outsource to,
and Eastern Europe with its large young, “westernized” or “americanized”,
well-educated and English-speaking population is, if anything, more and more
popular for companies looking to relocate production or acquire staff.

~~~
acdha
I think you’re looking at the wrong factor — Eastern European outsourcing has
plenty of the same failures, and for the same reasons. Most of the companies
which jumped on outsourcing did so because their internal processes were
failing and then spent the next few years learning that adding communications
overhead and conflicting incentives doesn’t improve that situation. That’s a
hard lesson for many companies since it means accepting that the root cause
was management rather than the workers.

------
EliRivers
What is the endgame of all of this? If a nation is composed of rich people who
live off wealth created in other countries, and a great many very poor people,
for how long do those other countries continue to send the wealth they
generate to foreign rich people? And advances in wealth creation; those will
happen in foreign countries. The rich people in the country that no longer
generates wealth will only survive by buying into those new wealth generators.

Eventually, will there be a leftover country composed of rich people who own
some wealth generation in foreign countries and a great many poor people? I
suppose eventually, Mexicans will be complaining that their jobs are going
north to people who will work for much less money.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Wealth inequality is the end game. Even within the united states the divide
only gets bigger. This state can be maintained indefinitely as long as the
ones on the bottom aren't suffering enough to the point where they decide to
just stop working or raise pitchforks.

~~~
Mikeb85
It won't even matter in a generation or less, when robots do most of the
labour and the rich have autonomous robotic armies to protect them from the
revolutionary masses...

~~~
stephengillie
_...the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots
begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in
the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human
mind."_

------
luckydude
This is a heart breaking read. And it is about the sort of people who hoped
that Trump was going to make things better. In my opinion, Trump spoke to
their pain, Hillary did not. So they voted him in and he's doing nothing to
help them.

The only positive, if you will, is her daughter got into Purdue and will maybe
have a better chance in life.

The american dream, for working class people, seems pretty darn dead. It's
super depressing.

------
HillaryBriss
the article is worth reading. it really makes you feel for the workers at
these plants. they're on the front lines of globalization, unlike workers in
certain other sectors, whose jobs are protected _by law._

a good deal of US politics is about classes of workers (and entire
corporations) trying to either maintain their current barriers against
globalization, or trying to build new barriers against globalization.

------
patrickg_zill
I read a comment elsewhere that the strife is between the people on the left
side of the iq bell curve, and those on the right.

Steelworkers and blue collar jobs, left side, mostly, while those in upper
management that ship the jobs elsewhere in search of arbitrage are on the
right side. Lobbyists and pols, right side, that rejiggered the export and
import laws to benefit the right side.

Wondering what others think of this explanation...

~~~
neuro_imager
Appallingly simplistic (if not entirely wrong).

And I've never met someone in management that belonged on the right side of an
IQ bell curve.

~~~
zo1
You accuse the other person of being "entirely wrong" and then you go and
claim that all management you've ever worked with is effectively on the left-
side of the IQ bell curve? I.e. Saying they are all unintelligent.

~~~
neuro_imager
Good, you understood me. Well done.

------
jamesmp98
Maybe they should just learn to code. That's the magic job these days right?

