Our
View: Conundrum of businesses
Every
day you hear about another one. Another
business in the United States that has thrown
up its hands in defeat, admitting that it
just can't make it anymore. Competition
is too stiff, labor is too high and their
going to have to shut down that last big
factory that has been employing 20,000 people
for the last decade. Yup, they are packing
up, shipping out and going where the sun
always shines on their bottom line, where
labor is cheap and the workers are always
happy to see their crisp new dollar at the
end of the day.
A
mingling response comes from the people.
Resentment maybe, understanding from a few,
but mostly we see it as just one more business
in a growing exodus and view it with the
apathy of a society that once again does
not understand the ramifications of its
actions.
And
so they go, one by one, sometimes in big
conglomerate groups, but unendingly they
pack their bags and are never heard from
again. Except on the shelves of our local
grocery store or department store.
But
what businesses are so blind to, or maybe
they just don't care, is that eventually
their actions will start to catch up with
them. Everybody knows that the best way
to hurt a business is to target its profits,
the very lifeblood that keeps those select
few at the top investing their hard-earned
money. What the businesses don't see is
that they will be the undoing of themselves.
As
more and more businesses take their factories
and the jobs they provided to distant countries
where they can pay almost nothing for labor,
more and more workers in the United States
are forced in to lower paying service jobs.
This migration of a great number of workers
from manufacturing to service is not just
some strange sign of the times. It is a
trend cause by the sudden removal of a large
percentage of those manufacturing jobs.
As
these skilled workers become mindless service
drones their pay decreases, their productivity
decreases, they are now under-employed.
They
should be happy to have a job, shout the
heavy-handed businessmen and the moral right.
And we're sure they are.
More
and more people migrate to the service sector,
but as they do service sector businesses
try to find a way to cut their own costs.
Why can't they be like the manufacturers
they ask, why can't we ship our services
out of the United States. So, they do. People
from other countries are taught to speak
perfect English so we never know that the
voice on the other line is not American.
Now not only are the manufacturers underemployed,
but service workers are unemployed as well.
Telemarketers, tech-support operators, customer
service representatives are thrown out in
the street.
But
now the businesses ask themselves, 10, 20,
maybe 100 years down the road, now who will
buy our products? Who will call our customer
service lines? All of the workers can't
afford our products anymore. Our precious
middle-class no longer can buy a new car
every few years, or clothes for school every
semester. What will we do now?
We
must find cheaper labor. That will solve
our problem. A sign of the times all right.
What's more American than Levi's? Well,
they're closing their last United States
factory. That's what's more American than
Levi's.
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