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The real issue is they don't want to pay their workers a proper wage. This is why they offshore or overly rely on automation.
by richardjam73 3y ago
The real issue is they don't want to pay their workers a proper wage. This is why they offshore or overly rely on automation.
- gnat 3y agoAs the article says, premium wrenches are already made in America. Consumers pay for comparatively-expensive American labour in comparatively-expensive premium products. The article is about an attempt to onshore the wrenches for a low-price tools brand. Those wrenches are currently made in a labour-intensive process by low-cost Chinese labour. If they use USA labour they'll have to charge premium tool prices and consumers won't go for it. So they tried to automate. Yes, reducing the need for American labour, but not because they wanted to charge premium prices for the result. Interestingly, even the machines required to bring manufacturing back to America aren't made in America.
- PaulHoule 3y agoThe automation heavy factory that they couldn’t get to work is an old story.
- stefan_ 3y agoThat's not interesting, it is the utterly predictable result of not making anything. Of course the only ones getting better at it and making machines for it are those doing the manufacturing.
- dilyevsky 3y agoThat’s not true in chip making for example
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago> by low-cost Chinese labour. Why are Chinese willing to do labor for low-cost while Americans are "unwilling/uninterested" in such labor?
- whatshisface 3y agoBecause the country has lower standards of living and a government that busts independent unions while deliberately manipulating their currency to make sure workers do not end up with too much buying power.
- the_only_law 3y agoProbably because the American couldn’t even pay for housing on wage the Chinese worker can.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoDifferent places have different costs of living.
- ahoka 3y agoUnfortunately, higher cost of living doesn’t automatically raise wages though.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y agoWhile true in the abstract, that's not germane here.
- harywilke 3y agoCost of living is somewhere between 40% to 70% less in China.
- roenxi 3y agoThat is a bit circular. The economy isn't like weather where some places just have less rain. China's cost of living is 40-70% lower because the people doing the work are willing to charge less.
- happytiger 3y agoThe only problem with the argument is that it’s completely false (not you, the company). > These days, China's labor costs are only 4% cheaper than those in the U.S. when productivity is factored in, according to Oxford Economics. https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/news/economy/china-cheap-labor-productivity/#:~:text=These%20days%2C%20China's%20labor%20costs,in%2C%20according%20to%20Oxford%20Economics https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/news/economy/china-cheap-la.... So once you realize the company is using the excuse (lying?) about the labor excuse, then you have to wonder what the real reason is. Especially after their disaster of a 2022 (which was directly the result of supply chain problems in... Drum roll please... China). Good opinion piece: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4547012-stanley-black-and-decker-im-turning-away-from-this-turnaround-story https://seekingalpha.com/article/4547012-stanley-black-and-d... More information: https://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/global_labor_rates_china_is_no_longer_a_low_cost_country https://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/global_labor_rates_chi...
- jncfhnb 3y ago“Productivity” is a very hand wavey idea.
- 542458 3y agoI’m not really sure how that’s possible - when I’ve gotten quotes for short run highly automated manufacturing (the stuff the US should be comparatively good at!), the overseas numbers are usually about half those of the US on a per part basis. IIRC can try this for yourself on Xometry by changing the manufacturing location. But there’s also more than just labor cost. In my experience: when we ask a Chinese manufacturer about something they don’t have the capability to do, they’ll come back with subcontracting options from the factory down the road who can do it. There’s so much manufacturing capability concentrated in a small number of places that every process option is on the table. But in North America, it’s a very different story. Everything is so spread out so your options are dramatically more limited unless you want to be shipping parts across the country. I’m not saying NA-based manufacturing is bad: the org I work for still does most stuff here for agility, communication, and security reasons. But it’s not cheap. Opinions are my own.
- 3y ago
- jackhack 3y ago"a low-price tools brand" Excuse me, but what? The Craftsman brand historically was a consumer premium brand, priced midway between tradesmen premium brands like Snap-On and consumer "hardware store cheap tools" -- Craftsman was never a low-price brand. Craftsman used to stand for quality, with a lifetime no-questions-asked guarantee wherein, if the tool fails for any reason, it will be replaced. Period. No questions asked, no receipt required. Quality. And men proudly used their father's or grandfather's tools. I remember well when Craftsman moved hand tool manufacturing from USA to China. Clearly cost of production was lower, but prices didn't change. The company could pocket the difference... and that's just how it went, at least until the consumer wised up and realized what was happening : a quiet substitution of Chinese-made cheap products but keeping yesterday's premium price. Cheap tool at top-dollar price. Tradesmen are not fools -- they know when their tools are not holding up, and they're being cheated. So the consumer rightly felt cheated and abandoned the brand. Sears broke the contract, and quickly lost the trust. In just a few years, they destroyed one of the most trusted brands which took 100 years to build. The brand was sold off, and now it's just another meaningless string of letters. Today, Sears is dead and gone, for many reasons just like this. Good riddance.
- abstrakraft 3y ago[flagged]
- indymike 3y ago> Sears broke the contract, and quickly lost the trust. In just a few years, they destroyed one of the most trusted brands which took 100 years to build. The brand was sold off, and now it's just another meaningless string of letters. Today, Sears is dead and gone, for many reasons just like this. Good riddance. What actually happened: Sears got rolled up with KMart, eventually went out of business. Sears house brands like Craftsman and Kenmore (home appliances) were sold off during the fire sale at the end. Ironically, Sears was the Amazon of the early 1900s but became too invested in big mall stores. When the ecommerce boom hit, Sears had just closed down their catalog division.
- dismalpedigree 3y ago
- glitcher 3y agoSo then clickbait title should be modified to say "low-price wrench"? Makes sense that fairly paid labor is going to result in more expensive products that the end consumer will likely pass over if it's lacking in quality. And many consumers don't shop with these issues in mind. If they're on a tight budget and just need to fix something, lowest price may be their only priority. Tough problem to address from all angles.
- renewiltord 3y ago[flagged]
- morkalork 3y agoWow and I thought calling someone an NPC was an insult!
- renewiltord 3y agoThe nth time someone's like "corporations dude", "capitalism dude", "they just want to see butts in seats dude". Christ, it's like some kind of pothead lamentation circle.
- matrix_overload 3y agoThat's because businesses compete with each other. So if Corporation A suddenly decides to pay workers a "proper wage", and raises the product prices accordingly, Corporation B will just take their share. That's where the regulators are supposed to step in by setting the rules that both Corporation A and Corporation B are forced to follow, if they want to access the market. Except, they won't because the elites are perfectly fine with the status quo, and the regular people seem to care more about pronouns and plastic straws, than being able to afford a decent lifestyle.
- sokoloff 3y agoI have no problem with and want regulators to regulate on worker safety, plant emissions, and truth/fairness in advertising. I don’t want regulators to force rules on lifetime warranty, sales methods, tolerances and material specifications and the like. The latter is where the tool truck brands are often winning for demanding users of tools.
- matrix_overload 3y agoSure, but it needs to be enforced for imports as well. Currently we have draconian emissions rules domestically, and a complete blind eye when it comes to any offshore production.
- quietthrow 3y agoThat’s not the real issue. You are confusing a side effect with a root cause. The root is capitalism. Btw ,for the record, I am not against capitalism. I am very much for it. It’s just that this is the side effect of capitalism. A capitalistic environment begets competition. Competition begets survival. Survival begets perpetual need to contain costs. People for most business are a big part of its cost structure. Unless you are a monopoly (think google etc) there is little incentive to give your employees a fair wage. Labor market supply and demand play a part in this too but all things equal to survive in competition keeping cost as low as possible goes a very very long way. I think just like everything evolves capitalism needs to evolve too. “We need capitalism 2.0”Profit cannot be the sole focus. We need to shift to capitalism with a heavy bent on sustainability. Sustainable profits, sustainable for the community it serves in etc. we live in an evolved society where we curb our raw instincts for the general good. There used to be a time when all humans simply acted on their r as emotion and instincts and from that we evolved on. Same need to happen with how we organize and structure our economies and businesses.
- richardjam73 3y agoI don't think the actual cause is capitalism. I think that there is a business culture that seeks maximum profit at any cost. Seeking maximum profit is not actually required to run a business, you can do so with a lower profit and not go broke.
- seabird 3y agoYou're going to be hard-pressed to convince somebody that they should go with Snap-on, Matco, Mac, Stahlwille, Hazet, KTC, Ko-ken, or any other company that is making superior tools by paying their workers better wages when doing so means they'll be paying multiple tens of thousands by the time it's all said and done. The easy (and wrong) answer to why this is happening is that capitalism ruins everything. The actual answer is that most people don't need or want tools and will not pay the premium for good new tools.
- bombcar 3y agoYou sell the high end brands by selling "this tool will not fail you" - and you prove that by manufacturing it in a high-cost area (as we're seeing, you can't make low-cost tools in high-cost areas) among other things. China can make exceptionally high-quality tools, you just have to design it well and pay for it.
- yibg 3y agoThing is I don’t need a tool that won’t fail me. I need a wrench once every couple of years and not for anything difficult. I got a cheap set from Amazon. I know it’s low quality and not the most durable, but it’s sufficient for my use case. Even if I were to replace the set twice it’s still cheaper.
- KRAKRISMOTT 3y agoYou need to figure why you support onshoring. The elites support it because they can see the writing on the wall for what might happen in a future conflict, not out of the goodness of their hearts or for some fantasy about labor economics. The "made in America" nonsense is bullshit sold to unions and rural areas decimated by outsourcing for the sake of votes. The consent is manufactured by dangling a carrot that will never materialize. The jobs are going to Mexico, they are not coming back. The feds want corporations to onshore for purely strategic reasons, and all the subsidies are to make automation possible to bring the costs down. The workers were never the priority.
- spiralx 3y agoBrutal but true. Mexico will replace China as a manufacturing hub at some point in the next decade.
- matchbok 3y agoSimply incorrect. The market doesn't want that, you don't want. You, and most others, want a $99 drill. A $99 drill doesn't support your fantasy wages.
- silisili 3y agoYou can get a Ryobi HP+ Brushless drill for $50. It's a fantastic unit for all but the heaviest users. You can't tell me those couldn't be made in the USA at a premium of $49 per unit. You could literally pay $50/hr, produce only one unit per hour, and still come out even. The outsourcing arguments are lazy and outdated. Companies screwed up outsourcing it all, and the US is unable to regain its foothold. Labor costs are negligible here, even if US were twice the price.