Punch line: Fmr. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says that the problem isn’t that there are too few manufacturing jobs in the U.S., it’s that unions don’t have the sway they used to have.
Excerpted from Salon; “The factory jobs aren’t coming back”
The U.S. has 5.5 million fewer factory jobs today than in July 2000 – and 12 million fewer than in 1990.
Blame that on lower-wage workers overseas … and numerically-controlled machine tools and robotics.
Not to worry, though, because bringing back American manufacturing isn’t the real challenge, anyway.
The real challenge is creating good jobs for the majority of Americans who lack four-year college degrees.
Manufacturing used to supply lots of these kind of jobs, but that was only because factory workers were represented by unions powerful enough to get high wages.
That’s no longer the case.
In the 1950s, more than a third of American workers were represented by a union.
Now, fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers have a union behind them.
If there’s a single reason why the median wage has dropped dramatically for non-college workers over the past three and a half decades, it’s the decline of unions.
Let me make sure that I understand.
Folks who don’t finish college can’t compete with equally skilled (or unskilled) foreign workers who charge a lot less for their services.
And, they can’t compete with high tech machines that crank out consistent quality at low cost.
So, the answer is to introduce a market inefficiency — a labor cartel – that forces U.S. companies to pay unskilled laborers more than their true economic value.
And then, when the companies pass along the added costs to consumers … we’re all some how better off.
Do I have it right?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for unskilled laborers to get paid their true economic value … and enhance their educational and skills’ bases if they want to be paid more?
The Homa Files 