Everyone has to grow up and realize that labor is just another material input in the products we make, sell and buy. Yes we all want a big check and our work is always harder than everyone else's. If we didn't have a high opion of ourselves, who would have it for us???

Labor is an input and we go to the supplier that gives us the best bang for the buck. If you're 10x more productive than the guy that is willing to do the same work for 1/10th of the pay, then you will always have a job because your supply line is shorter to the final selling point in this country. If your productivity/quality advantage does not over ride the labor rate/transportation costs to get the completed product to it's final destination for the sale, you will be out of luck.

This is not a Union laborer issue, an Executive issue, a plant/line worker issue, an hourly issue, a salaried issue or even a computer programmer issue these days. The reality is no job is guaranteed these days. We do not have a devine right to be employeed nor even a constituional right to employement, no matter what the Union Mantra may say.

There are a whole lot of engineers and programers in India that are trained and ready to design an code in 24/7 in as many shifts as you can put PCs in the building for them to work on. As soon as they can make sense of US GAP accounting reporting, SEC requirements and Sarbanes-Oxely, you'll find Financial Shared services running the month end closes out of Inida for big companies too.

There is a reason that everytime you get a call from one of your credit card companies that is trying sell you their latest service while you are eating dinner, that caller speakes the "Queen's English" with an Indian accent. The telemarketers in the US are not productive enough to overcome the long distance phone costs and the lower wage rate in India.

Economic protectionism only serves to screw over everyone else that is not in the protected industry. Case in point would be the failure of the steel tariffs over the last year or so. Did those tariffs keep Rouge Steel from going belly up? Did they prevent the Russian company buyout? Did it prevent the paycuts after the buyout. NO. Did everyone using steel in their products have to pay higher steel costs? Did the majority of automotive suppliers end up eating those costs as lost profits impacting their results since the OEMs were not going to accept the costs? Yes.

Here's some quick math for you to think about in our little example. This is a year when OEMs want 3-5 % cutoff the top and their suppliers are paying a 5-10% markup on steel to protect Union jobs in an industry that at least has some National Security justification do you think the math was justified? Guess what, jobs were lost in the Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive suppliers because they had to eat the costs for protecting the Union Jobs in the Steel industry.

If we apply the proposed logic for protecting the automotive industry jobs, to other industries such as software, shoes, carpeting, furniture, TVs and even PCs what do you think would happen??? None of us would be able to afford those things if they were not mass produced outside of this country.

Believe it or not, Mexico is now moving plants to China. They are starting to go through all the same things we have seen in our ecomony over the last 20 years.

Water will always flow from the high spot to the low spot following the path of least resistance. Companies will always produce the best product that their customers want at the lowest possible cost while selling it at the highest possible price. It's called the free market and it's the corner stone of what makes America possible. Tampering with that model may help a few people but it will only serve to hurt everyone else by more than those few can ever be helped.

So how do you keep your job. Find your competitive advantage in your process and continue to improve it. If your output and quality can over come that lower labor cost and the transportation cost to market, you're golden, but don't just sit back and expect a contract to keep your paycheck coming. It's not a question of being a lazy worker, it a question of avoiding being a complacent worker.

Just some things to stir the pot a bit.

Rick

 

Nice novel there Rick...

 

It's was the St. Patrick's Day hangover that made me do it.

Rick