Quote:
Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski
this has been debated here before, but the reason the UAW factories were able to provide high wages for work that could be done in other countries for a fraction of the price, is that US union members in other industries would never buy an Asian made car. And in turn UAW workers would never buy a Japanese TV. As long as those constructs held all was good. then they didn't hold anymore. Jobs are farmed out to low wage areas out of greed, at least not in the way you mean. jobs are farmed out because americans will no longer pay for americans to be paid.
|
My view of this is that there was a massive strategic mistake made by labor organizations and their leadership coming out of WW2, which was to protect their national markets rather than expand their membership internationally. By the 60s the mistake was clear but pretty hard to reverse, especially as US policy started to favor giving access to "our" multinationals to local non-union markets (and we even encouraged countries to set up enterprise zones that often protected multinationals from local unions and workforce rules) and it's just gotten worse.
Many of our multinational trade deals under Obama were starting to build in significant protections for unions in our trading partners. It's a step, but just one of many needing to be taken.
By the way, wages are rising very rapidly in all those places work got farmed out to. Those places are becoming important consumers and not just competitive producers.
Threaded Mode