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If you want Americans to reenter the manufacturing workforce, you need to convince everyone that manufacturing is a decent path to a good wage and lifestyle. A

If you want Americans to reenter the manufacturing workforce, you need to convince everyone that manufacturing is a decent path to a good wage and lifestyle. And then you need to make it actually happen. Unfortunately, over the last 25 years the US has decimated vocational education in the high schools while simultaneously convincing families that a 4-year college degree is the only way to a viable lifestyle. So we cram college-prep and AP classes down everyone's throats while we auction off the drafting tables and auto shop tools. It's for the best, since there's nowhere for a voc-ed student to go after graduation other than community college. Meanwhile we've moved on to dismantling unions and apprenticeships and all the other things that tracked workers into the factories and guaranteed them living wages. I'll let our European friends explain how they don't have this same problem.

x0x0 11y ago
I think decimated vocational education is a symptom not a cause. If manufacturing paid a living wage, we'd figure out a way to get people prepared to do it. It doesn't, and baring unions, never will again.
- douche 11y ago
  Actually, voc tech careers do pay a pretty healthy wage, for certain things. Welders, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, mechanics, those are all still decent paying jobs. Hard, more dangerous than white-collar work, but you can make respectable money doing them. It's getting so the certifications are getting a little onerous, but it's still better than dumping tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into a college education. Especially for those that don't have the wherewithal or temperament to do school
  - x0x0 11y ago
    I can verify that's not true for electricians, at least in WI -- father is an electrician. For his generation, it was true. For the current generation, it's no longer the case.
  - joezydeco 11y ago
    Aren't most of those positions typically union jobs?
- dwc 11y ago
  I think this is correct. I am not sure if unions would help at this point, unless they can lobby for laws to prevent moving manufacturing out of the country. Paying lower wages for manufacturing (as well as other lower costs) being the reason for why those jobs went somewhere else in the first place. Where "went somewhere else" means companies actively decided they wanted to stop manufacturing here and do it somewhere cheaper, and not hassle with unions.
- asuffield 11y ago
  It's certainly possible for unions to prevent manufacturing that pays less than a living wage. It's not clear to me how they could ever cause it to happen. The big problem that hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread is the other side of the equation: it's not enough to make the job pay a living wage for the workers. It must also produce a product that consumers want to buy, which means producing it at a price those consumers are willing to pay. There is a very direct relationship to consider here, because the consumers and the workers are often the same people. If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this. What unions can do - and frequently have done - is raise the minimum price of goods and transfer some fraction of this to the manufacturing workers. If this makes the goods too expensive, then the factory closes down because people aren't buying them. The cost of labour is substantially lower in various Asian countries. That isn't going to change, and you've effectively stated that you're unwilling to accept paying local labour similar rates. The conclusion you should be drawing from this is that the only way to make manufacturing work in this environment is to massively improve the productivity per unit of labour. You need to be getting away from people assembling things with their hands, and towards workers who build and maintain manufacturing automation. Sadly, when this opportunity arose in the recent past, it was those same unions who tried very hard to block it, and were successful in that goal - manufacturing is still a laborious manual process. Want to change this? Stop learning how to weld. Learn how to build a welding robot.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    >If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this. The manufacturing industry is not the tech industry. You can't produce physical goods with just your brain. Raw materials and machines play also part in the manufacturing cost, not just wages.
    - asuffield 11y ago
      Indeed, but the statement remains true. If it takes one week of labour to produce something that one week's wages won't buy, the price is clearly too high to sell. The correct price will have to be somewhat lower than this, for the reasons you state (among others).
paulryanrogers 11y ago
Are guaranteed livable wages a relatively modern phenomenon?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany "Trade unions in Germany have a history reaching back to the German revolution in 1848, and still play an important role in the German economy and society." Yes? Welding properly is difficult and takes hundreds of hours of practice (at least). I encourage everyone here to take an intro to welding at your local community college to round out your skillset.
  - x0x0 11y ago
    and in CA, we have a topical example of what happens when you have incompetent welders... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explos...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      The problem is, when you're a corporation who cuts corners by using cheaper, less capable workers, you must be penalized harshly for it. Otherwise, there is no incentive to do the work properly (at a slightly higher cost).
- digikata 11y ago
  One could argue that guaranteed livable wages have only become important because of the pace of change of the employment landscape.
  - stevetrewick 11y ago
    I'd argue that the other way around. Once you have a 'guaranteed liveable wage' you have reshaped the 'employment landscape' to permanently exclude anyone who's labour is worth less than that wage. You now need a welfare state to prevent those people starving to death.
Kenji 11y ago
Actually, in Europe we do have similar problems. A massive tertiary sector while the manufacturing jobs are getting sent to "best-cost" countries (you cannot say "low cost" because that would be offensive). Of course, we lose know-how this way and the quality of the products is not even close to back when it was made here.
- javajosh 11y ago
  Not an economist, but I suspect that if you could convince the mainstream to only buy very high quality, durable goods that this would naturally drive them to buy locally (at least in the long-industrialized first world). However it would also naturally drive them to buy fewer things less frequently, which is anathema to capitalism in general. And indeed it would tend to slow innovation since a faster cycle gives new businesses more opportunity to replace an incumbent! Note that this argument applies to software as well, although the "cost" to us is cognitive rather than economic.
  - gherkin0 11y ago
    > Not an economist, but I suspect that if you could convince the mainstream to only buy very high quality, durable goods that this would naturally drive them to buy locally (at least in the long-industrialized first world). Not necessarily. Such an effort would also have to go hand-in-hand with convincing local producers to make the very high quality goods you want people to buy. I'm an American, but if I want high-quality, I tend to get Japanese stuff, since their culture seems to value quality more. American business culture seems to be more about cutting corners and settling for barely good enough in the name of short term profit.
    - elevenfist 11y ago
      I'd be careful with buying "Japanese" stuff, many companies are aware of this consumer strategy and fabricate japanese name brand products elsewhere. Also, plenty made in the usa products are of high quality.
      - 11y ago
pjlegato 11y ago
Europe actually has a massive unemployment problem, particularly youth unemployment. Much worse than the US. European manufacturing has been just as decimated as US manufacturing has.
- SilasX 11y ago
  It's (ironically enough) a problem of unequal distributions. There are lots of not-college-educated lineworkers at auto plants that rake in lavish benefits while equally qualified (modulo experience) younger people who would love the work can't get in. But then, that's only to be expected from above-market-rate wages...
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    Yes, combined with the facts that workers in China, Mexico, and many other places will do the same work for a tiny fraction of EU wages, and can also be fired at will rather than enjoy extensive worker protection laws such as in Europe.
- shoarmadates 11y ago
  like which part of Europe? Greece, Italy and Spain? I think the location has nothing to do whether the vocational model is working or not. It is because of the country's problem, not the curriculum itself. The Dutch, Germany and Scandinavian has strong vocational program in their education system and they're doing fine with it.
  - pjlegato 11y ago
    All EU countries except Germany, as well as Norway, have higher youth umemployment rates than the US. Germany is not much lower than the US. http://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-youth-unemployment-rate-in-the-us/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjuste... http://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment... https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_youth_unemployment_rate_lfs https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_youth_unemployment_rat...
rebootthesystem 11y ago
> Meanwhile we've moved on to dismantling unions I can agree with most of what you said but your implication that dismantling unions is part of the problem is completely wrong. Unions are part and parcel of the problem. They created an environment with such unreasonable costs and rules that businesses had no choice but to go offshore in order to remain viable. For example, unions forced General Motors to continue paying full salaries to about 10,000 people who were no-longer needed due to automation and other improvements in manufacturing. GM, quite literally, had people going to "work" every day, go into this building and spend the day reading the newspaper and having coffee while being paid full wages with benefits. And that's just one example. Right now, in California, they are going to raise the cost of water, energy and gasoline in order to fix the infrastructure. Water pipes are in bad disrepair. Roads are a mess. So, we ask: What the hell have they been doing with the money we've been paying in taxes for decades? Well, they've been giving themselves huge raises, great benefits and ridiculous pensions. And, of course, not doing a fucking think towards maintaining the infrastructure. Taxpayers are suckers and unions are sinking us. The usual meme is to blame offshoring on "corporate greed". The only people who say that do so because they have no clue whatsoever how business runs. Do you know who triggered offshoring? You. Me. Everyone. Consumers. The minute the first few companies started to offer lower cost goods and we started to buy them the fate of our industries was sealed. Few would buy US-made blender for $300 when you could buy a Japanese, and later Chinese, made blender for $30 to $50. So, if you owned a company making blenders in the US the choices were clear: Go out of business or offshore. Greed has absolutely, positively nothing to do with it. It's as simple as survival. No, unions are a disaster. They served a purpose when they were needed. And, at that time they were a wonderful thing. Very important to understand that they were very good for our country. However, they devolved into beasts that each their very source of income. Today we can point at whole cities where this flawed interaction between unions and employers left a wide patch of devastation. Union bosses made out while unions members and industries got destroyed. Manufacturing cannot return to the US or Europe except where a highly automated process can be implemented. And, even then, China has an absolutely massive advantage in that their supply chain is short and highly optimized. Our supply pipes are long, expensive and very inefficient. Nothing is as eye opening as taking your own money, starting a business and instantly becoming exposed to the realities of taxation, government, labor, international commerce, supply and distribution chains, competition, sales and marketing. Most people love to talk about this stuff as if they actually had a clue. Start a business. Run it for ten years. Then come back and read what you wrote and you'll find yourself answering back exactly as I have. There's a lot more subtlety to this than meets they eye. In order to see it you have to have had years, decades of skin in the game and a solid understanding of business, which most people do not have. Yet everyone has an opinion.
tomcam 11y ago
Who is "dismantling" unions? How are they doing so?

x0x0 11y ago

I think decimated vocational education is a symptom not a cause. If manufacturing paid a living wage, we'd figure out a way to get people prepared to do it. It doesn't, and baring unions, never will again.

douche 11y ago
Actually, voc tech careers do pay a pretty healthy wage, for certain things. Welders, electricians, plumbers, HVAC, mechanics, those are all still decent paying jobs. Hard, more dangerous than white-collar work, but you can make respectable money doing them. It's getting so the certifications are getting a little onerous, but it's still better than dumping tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into a college education. Especially for those that don't have the wherewithal or temperament to do school
- x0x0 11y ago
  I can verify that's not true for electricians, at least in WI -- father is an electrician. For his generation, it was true. For the current generation, it's no longer the case.
- joezydeco 11y ago
  Aren't most of those positions typically union jobs?
dwc 11y ago
I think this is correct. I am not sure if unions would help at this point, unless they can lobby for laws to prevent moving manufacturing out of the country. Paying lower wages for manufacturing (as well as other lower costs) being the reason for why those jobs went somewhere else in the first place. Where "went somewhere else" means companies actively decided they wanted to stop manufacturing here and do it somewhere cheaper, and not hassle with unions.
asuffield 11y ago
It's certainly possible for unions to prevent manufacturing that pays less than a living wage. It's not clear to me how they could ever cause it to happen. The big problem that hasn't been mentioned so far in this thread is the other side of the equation: it's not enough to make the job pay a living wage for the workers. It must also produce a product that consumers want to buy, which means producing it at a price those consumers are willing to pay. There is a very direct relationship to consider here, because the consumers and the workers are often the same people. If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this. What unions can do - and frequently have done - is raise the minimum price of goods and transfer some fraction of this to the manufacturing workers. If this makes the goods too expensive, then the factory closes down because people aren't buying them. The cost of labour is substantially lower in various Asian countries. That isn't going to change, and you've effectively stated that you're unwilling to accept paying local labour similar rates. The conclusion you should be drawing from this is that the only way to make manufacturing work in this environment is to massively improve the productivity per unit of labour. You need to be getting away from people assembling things with their hands, and towards workers who build and maintain manufacturing automation. Sadly, when this opportunity arose in the recent past, it was those same unions who tried very hard to block it, and were successful in that goal - manufacturing is still a laborious manual process. Want to change this? Stop learning how to weld. Learn how to build a welding robot.
- imtringued 11y ago
  >If one worker takes one week to manufacture an item which that worker is not willing to buy at a price of one week's wages, then they should not expect to be able to make a living from this. The manufacturing industry is not the tech industry. You can't produce physical goods with just your brain. Raw materials and machines play also part in the manufacturing cost, not just wages.
  - asuffield 11y ago
    Indeed, but the statement remains true. If it takes one week of labour to produce something that one week's wages won't buy, the price is clearly too high to sell. The correct price will have to be somewhat lower than this, for the reasons you state (among others).

paulryanrogers 11y ago

Are guaranteed livable wages a relatively modern phenomenon?

toomuchtodo 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany "Trade unions in Germany have a history reaching back to the German revolution in 1848, and still play an important role in the German economy and society." Yes? Welding properly is difficult and takes hundreds of hours of practice (at least). I encourage everyone here to take an intro to welding at your local community college to round out your skillset.
- x0x0 11y ago
  and in CA, we have a topical example of what happens when you have incompetent welders... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explos...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    The problem is, when you're a corporation who cuts corners by using cheaper, less capable workers, you must be penalized harshly for it. Otherwise, there is no incentive to do the work properly (at a slightly higher cost).
digikata 11y ago
One could argue that guaranteed livable wages have only become important because of the pace of change of the employment landscape.
- stevetrewick 11y ago
  I'd argue that the other way around. Once you have a 'guaranteed liveable wage' you have reshaped the 'employment landscape' to permanently exclude anyone who's labour is worth less than that wage. You now need a welfare state to prevent those people starving to death.

Kenji 11y ago

Actually, in Europe we do have similar problems. A massive tertiary sector while the manufacturing jobs are getting sent to "best-cost" countries (you cannot say "low cost" because that would be offensive). Of course, we lose know-how this way and the quality of the products is not even close to back when it was made here.

javajosh 11y ago
Not an economist, but I suspect that if you could convince the mainstream to only buy very high quality, durable goods that this would naturally drive them to buy locally (at least in the long-industrialized first world). However it would also naturally drive them to buy fewer things less frequently, which is anathema to capitalism in general. And indeed it would tend to slow innovation since a faster cycle gives new businesses more opportunity to replace an incumbent! Note that this argument applies to software as well, although the "cost" to us is cognitive rather than economic.
- gherkin0 11y ago
  > Not an economist, but I suspect that if you could convince the mainstream to only buy very high quality, durable goods that this would naturally drive them to buy locally (at least in the long-industrialized first world). Not necessarily. Such an effort would also have to go hand-in-hand with convincing local producers to make the very high quality goods you want people to buy. I'm an American, but if I want high-quality, I tend to get Japanese stuff, since their culture seems to value quality more. American business culture seems to be more about cutting corners and settling for barely good enough in the name of short term profit.
  - elevenfist 11y ago
    I'd be careful with buying "Japanese" stuff, many companies are aware of this consumer strategy and fabricate japanese name brand products elsewhere. Also, plenty made in the usa products are of high quality.
    - 11y ago

pjlegato 11y ago

Europe actually has a massive unemployment problem, particularly youth unemployment. Much worse than the US. European manufacturing has been just as decimated as US manufacturing has.

SilasX 11y ago
It's (ironically enough) a problem of unequal distributions. There are lots of not-college-educated lineworkers at auto plants that rake in lavish benefits while equally qualified (modulo experience) younger people who would love the work can't get in. But then, that's only to be expected from above-market-rate wages...
- pjlegato 11y ago
  Yes, combined with the facts that workers in China, Mexico, and many other places will do the same work for a tiny fraction of EU wages, and can also be fired at will rather than enjoy extensive worker protection laws such as in Europe.
shoarmadates 11y ago
like which part of Europe? Greece, Italy and Spain? I think the location has nothing to do whether the vocational model is working or not. It is because of the country's problem, not the curriculum itself. The Dutch, Germany and Scandinavian has strong vocational program in their education system and they're doing fine with it.
- pjlegato 11y ago
  All EU countries except Germany, as well as Norway, have higher youth umemployment rates than the US. Germany is not much lower than the US. http://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-youth-unemployment-rate-in-the-us/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjuste... http://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-rate-in-eu-countries/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment... https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_youth_unemployment_rate_lfs https://ycharts.com/indicators/norway_youth_unemployment_rat...

rebootthesystem 11y ago

> Meanwhile we've moved on to dismantling unions I can agree with most of what you said but your implication that dismantling unions is part of the problem is completely wrong. Unions are part and parcel of the problem. They created an environment with such unreasonable costs and rules that businesses had no choice but to go offshore in order to remain viable. For example, unions forced General Motors to continue paying full salaries to about 10,000 people who were no-longer needed due to automation and other improvements in manufacturing. GM, quite literally, had people going to "work" every day, go into this building and spend the day reading the newspaper and having coffee while being paid full wages with benefits. And that's just one example. Right now, in California, they are going to raise the cost of water, energy and gasoline in order to fix the infrastructure. Water pipes are in bad disrepair. Roads are a mess. So, we ask: What the hell have they been doing with the money we've been paying in taxes for decades? Well, they've been giving themselves huge raises, great benefits and ridiculous pensions. And, of course, not doing a fucking think towards maintaining the infrastructure. Taxpayers are suckers and unions are sinking us. The usual meme is to blame offshoring on "corporate greed". The only people who say that do so because they have no clue whatsoever how business runs. Do you know who triggered offshoring? You. Me. Everyone. Consumers. The minute the first few companies started to offer lower cost goods and we started to buy them the fate of our industries was sealed. Few would buy US-made blender for $300 when you could buy a Japanese, and later Chinese, made blender for $30 to $50. So, if you owned a company making blenders in the US the choices were clear: Go out of business or offshore. Greed has absolutely, positively nothing to do with it. It's as simple as survival. No, unions are a disaster. They served a purpose when they were needed. And, at that time they were a wonderful thing. Very important to understand that they were very good for our country. However, they devolved into beasts that each their very source of income. Today we can point at whole cities where this flawed interaction between unions and employers left a wide patch of devastation. Union bosses made out while unions members and industries got destroyed. Manufacturing cannot return to the US or Europe except where a highly automated process can be implemented. And, even then, China has an absolutely massive advantage in that their supply chain is short and highly optimized. Our supply pipes are long, expensive and very inefficient. Nothing is as eye opening as taking your own money, starting a business and instantly becoming exposed to the realities of taxation, government, labor, international commerce, supply and distribution chains, competition, sales and marketing. Most people love to talk about this stuff as if they actually had a clue. Start a business. Run it for ten years. Then come back and read what you wrote and you'll find yourself answering back exactly as I have. There's a lot more subtlety to this than meets they eye. In order to see it you have to have had years, decades of skin in the game and a solid understanding of business, which most people do not have. Yet everyone has an opinion.

tomcam 11y ago

Who is "dismantling" unions? How are they doing so?