I am a factory..... I made things...I was mighty
Posted by stargeezer 11 years, 6 months ago to Technology
Worth viewing.
SOURCE URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OQcoDQq3-o#t=22
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While we're very happy to have you in the Gulch and appreciate your wanting to fully engage, some things in the Gulch (e.g. voting, links in comments) are a privilege, not a right. To get you up to speed as quickly as possible, we've provided two options for earning these privileges.
When I went back several years ago the plant stood empty--broken windows and pigeon crap over what few machines were left. Only ghosts of the noise and smells and fellow workers remained.
So sad.
WW2 vets retiring. Selling their business because they didn’t want someone else running the company with their name over the door and the proceeds of the sale was their retirement fund.
Unions.
Upper management.
Other companies buying the company for their product line and then moving it to their own factory.
Obsolescence’s of the product
Obsolescence’s of the equipment in the factory.
Overseas competition.
It's their business and more power to them if they decide to pull the plug when there is a lot of life left to them to enjoy. Unfortunately, those employees who were not prepared for the change suffer, but they had the same opportunity as their boss.
The second item, Unions, I don't even want to get started about. They are nothing short of extortion artists.
I quite agree. I have observed all of those factors at work. After thirty plus years, I want to sell my business and retire to Florida! I can't find a buyer I can trust to take care of my people. I have long term employees who are producers. They need and deserve their jobs. The tool and die business is a dying trade. We are essential to the nation's security and manufacturing businesses, but we are not appreciated, or properly compensated in today's market. I can find people who would like to liquidate my assets or remove me from competition, but I can't stomach those options. I find myself in a quandary... my loyalty to those who have reciprocated may keep me here until my people are ready to retire also... They are only about five years behind me. I am not hiring any more, and have through attrition, reduced my workforce to the bare minimum. When the last few are ready to go, I am out of here. I have approached them with the option of taking over, but none of them want the management headaches, or have the capital. Financing has all but dried up. Banks that used to loan me tens of thousands on a handshake now want to attach everything I own regardless of my exemplary credit rating. Michigan is not the industrial magnet it once was... it has become more of a repellent...
Regards,
O.A.
I have been on a partial strike for several years now. I have reduced my work force and efforts at growing the company, downsizing where I can. I will not work more than I must any longer, just to feed the parasites. At this point I am exploring all the possibilities. I would like to strike completely. If not for the people still in my employ and the wonderful customers and relations that depend upon me, I would liquidate tomorrow. I am tired of living in the darkness and long for sunny skies.
Regards,
O.A.
Shake my head at people shopping at Walmart, buying cheap Chinese junk, with "Proud to be Union" shirts and bumper stickers.
http://www.businessinsider.com/world-inf...
I groan every time I hear "where have all the jobs gone". My answer is --to China stupid.
My first car was a '69 GM car and it took me several years to discover and fix several manufacturing defects. One of my next cars was a '77 GM product and it took about three years to correct a design flaw that made the engine stall repeatedly and dangerously during warmup. And I fixed it.
Car companies... and other industries... that lose market share because of shoddy design or manufacturing deserve exactly what happens to them... except bailouts.
I will tell you a fact...WalMart is the largest employer in my town...period! Without it, many, many more people would be on Food Stamps and Welfare.
They may not be perfect, but they're successful and they ARE helping the local economy.
They can't stand that!
Dear factory you can stay closed I have a better safer and higher paying job without you and nobody can tell me differently. It call freedom in America, deal with it . Excuse me I need to pick something up at Walmart.
Every industry is subject to business cycles. That's a fact of life. Scat may bot like that, may refuse to even acknowledge it's true, but time breaks down mountains too.
Been there, done that.
.
"History has shown that suppliers suffer if they run afoul of Wal-Mart. Rubbermaid raised the prices it charged Wal-Mart in the mid-1990s because of an 80% jump in the cost of a key ingredient in its plastic containers. The retailer responded by giving more shelf space to lower-priced competitors, helping drive Rubbermaid into a 1999 merger with rival Newell, says John Mariotti, a former Rubbermaid executive. "Rubbermaid earned Wal-Mart's wrath by not giving it the best deal," he says."
There are many other company's that have run afoul of Walmart.
Please explain why you feel you are owed a check for not producing? That's what I don't get.
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In AS, there came a time when the lines of workers were very, very long for people applying for jobs as janitors, sweeper and greasers, but nobody could be found who would or could step up and take a position of responsibility or a creative position. The skills had been trained out of the workforce. As I see it, today's high school graduates leave school ONLY fit to do one of a very few jobs - they can go to work at WalMart or it's cousins, they can enter the military if they have the ability, they can work for MacDonalds, or they go on to college.
Todays colleges and universities are packed with kids who don't have a clue how to make a living. Because it's not taught. In 2005 I completed two degrees at a good private university in the midwest. As I was retired, my efforts were a journey of personal growth, not a effort to prepare for a job market. But I had plenty of opportunity to talk to the kids about what their future goals for employment. Frankly, I was shocked to find that the vast majority were planning to work for these same min. wage positions that were available to them before they spent $100k on school.
As I got to know them better I also found out that most of these untethered souls were in school because Mom and Dad had worked and saved so that their kids could attend a good school. In short, they were in school to put off going to work.
That was just a fraction of the waste I saw. There was also the intent of the school. In almost every department of that school, they were teaching people to be teachers, not grade school or high school teachers, they were training university professors. The field did not matter, the goal was to replicate themselves.
I was studying Art and in this school, in the entire Fine Arts dept. there were 28 who graduated with me. Of that 28 there was a painting magor who got a job as a helper in a gallery for minimum wage, a girl who got a job at WalMart as a cake decorator, and I went into business for my self a couple years before graduating by opening my own studio and gallery. Those were the "successes" of the university. They made a huge deal of my studio in all their press for a couple years, but aside from the basic skills that were taught in the first year, the university had little to do with it. Nation wide there are fewer than two dozen art professors hired each year and most of these positions go to experienced professors.
When I was in high school a few decades back, a boy graduating would have taken auto mechanics, welding, mechanical drawing, machine shop and wood working - at least one class in each area. And IF they found one that appealed to them they could take 3 or 4 more classes in order to develop some level of competence in the field. When they would graduate they could get a starting job in that industry because they could DO something. They could enter an apprenticeship to further their education and their pay would be based on their value to their employer.
Today they leave school having no value at all. And they line up at the government feeding trough for housing, food stamps, transportation and more often than not, more tax dollar paid for re-education.
Very sad.
I also think we're making a big mistake with pushing so many towards college. This has been a function of college degrees reaping more lifetime incomes, which had been true. Nowadays, we've got so many grads with useless degrees, 'cause the colleges needed to keep them there to keep reaping their tuition loan and federal grant money, that we've got so many with a sheepskin but no worthwhile skill. And we don't have people with vocational technical skills to run the machines in the factories. Apprenticeships aren't viable anymore due to min wage and union wage scales - you can't afford to pay someone these minimums for them to stand around observing the seasoned worker and develop their skills.
Oh Boy! I know what you're talking about! :D
It was not WM that caused the demise of the American factory, it was inevitability, as it is inevitable that manufacturing will return to America. But not necessarily the same level of employment.
I would also point out that the corporate farms are the primary recipients of money from the annual Farm Bill, so the takeover of the family farm isn't nearly so much efficiency-related as it is subsidization-related.
the part that does go to farm industries can be split between dairy product producers (the next step or two above farmer) and processing centers that are to labor intensive to ever be profitable, except the health of the nation requires OJ in the winter. the family (and large operation) farmers get very, very little of that entire amount.
They basically put one person at each stage of the assembly line where any one component was plugged in, screwed down or added.
After they understood each of the steps, they methodically automated EVERY step, basically one step at a time, until there were virtually NO people on the assembly line at all.
So people in the US got mad at the Japanese for that. Moochers.
When I worked in Mexico, the machinery was more antiquated, but when you pay someone $3 per hour vs. $27 per hour you can take up to 9 times as long/more workers before you are just break-even. Of course, you've got to figure in shipping costs and other costs (like kh mentions).
Don't get me started on the effect of labor. I designed parts that a supply chain guy got a big bonus over moving to Mexico, only to find that the way they were designed was specifically to take advantage of machine capabilities that were not available in Mexico. So the whole thing flopped and all the quality and manufacturability improvements were lost, for a product that had about 7% of the total product cost due to labor. But the moron still got his big bonus.
Rarely has hidden material costs been the rationale for moving production to low labor cost countries, which is where this started.
I actually don't care about their human rights. If the people won't stand up for their own rights then who are we to do it for them. I feel the same about the US helping to liberate a people that won't liberate themselves first (aka Iraq, Afghanistan).
You didn't see the French taking the lead in American Revolution.
The only reason why we let the Chinese get away with this is because we need their money to fund the moochers in this country.
A spin off on one of your statements is I was disgusted by the fact US blood was shed to "liberate" Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and put a MONARCHY back on the throne! HELLO, WTF??? I thought it was a good idea to boot Saddam, but put in a constitutional republic at the very least!
The only way to install a Constitutional Republic would be to make Kuwait an American protectorate and appoint an American governor-general...
Make no mistake, If China wanted/needed to, they would bring the Hammer down on its people (not that were too far from that).
But, yes, it's being manipulated and we're OK with it. In the mean time, China now has an Aircraft killer missile, but, we're all best bud's.
I do my level best to buy American made/sourced when I can. Even if it's Union labor (mainly because there isn't much choice there.)
I don't think our enemy will be China, but we should never take our eye off them. The old Chinese communist guard is dying out and becoming irrelevant. Odd that as America becomes more socialist/communist and serf like, China is becoming more capitalist and free. With a trend like that it will become eventually inevitable that they could kick our butts if they chose to.
Why would you pay MORE for something just so someone who lives in your proximity can "have a job"?
You realize your mentality is the same mentality as minimum wage? Pay more for the same stuff just because. Which increases the price of everything, which means minimum wage will "need" to go up AGAIN so those "poor" people can afford the basics again because those basics are so expensive to produce because minimum wage is so high, etc...
When you can write your words so they make sense and I can understand what you are trying to say, then I will respond. Try punctuation for a start... take for example "Yours is the mentality of the people that want to profit off of nothing like welfare sponges you both claim the right to profit off of someone else by not adding value of your own"
Put some punctuation in there, maybe add a few words, I'll re-read it, and maybe it will make more sense.
Not only that, what I kinda somewhat sorta think what you are *trying* to say, has no relevance to what I said in the first place.