October 25, 2017
"After an Indianapolis factory said it would move production to Mexico, two longtime friends disagree whether to help the company train their replacements."
ADDED: This video presents the story very differently from the way it was told on the "Daily" podcast back on October 18th, here (NYT).
In the video, it's 2 old friends, one (the white one) who refuses to train the workers who will be getting their jobs in Mexico and the other (the black one) who chooses to take the extra money the company is paying to do the training. There's emphasis on the white man's turning his back on the black man and the black man's willingness to go to Mexico to help the people he's heard are "super nice."
The podcast gives a wider view: The workers realized (or at least believed) that the company needed them to train the new workers at the Mexican factory and that if they stuck together and all refused, the company would not be able to relocate the jobs. As I remember the podcast, the black workers broke ranks with the white workers, and that made the difference for everyone. The video deprives you of the context for the white man's disaffection for his black co-worker.
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53 comments:
Take your retirement and leave. Fuck 'em.
I thought Trump put a stop to this.
This guy has on a union t-shirt, so I'm assuming the contract controls -- and that it says GFY if management requests this.
CAIR: labor arbitrage, Democratic leverage, and "clean" wars.
An evocative piece. I could sympathize with both points of view but the guy who refused is probably right--the cost to customers probably won't go down but the profits will go up. And the quality remains to be seen.
I thought Trump put a stop to this.
The video was over a year old. Trump wasn't President when this happened.
"The video was over a year old. Trump wasn't President when this happened."
Something similar happens everyday somewhere in the US.
This is not rare and it hasn't stopped.
Note to self. Rexnor bearings, no mas, no bueno.
To clarify, the decision to move was made in 2016 and most of the video shot in 2016 but the move took place in summer of 2017 and the video produced later. In any case, it's sad. The product should be boycotted.
What about those tariffs?
How Indiana looks at Mexico is exactly how Washington and California look at South Carolina.
If free trade is net negative between nations, then it's net negative between US states.
The company didn't want to invest in modern machinery. Either way: robots or cheap labor, your low-skill labor is not something worth holding on to.
I think the guy who volunteered to train was right. The other guy was a selfish fool, and in effect wanted everyone to withhold their wanting to share.
I admire his resistance and don't blame the other guy for taking the extra money to train his replacement. I doubt the company would have canceled the move even if all the workers resisted. Company was set on cheaper labor from Mexico. Unions are worthless in these situations.
Kevin Williamson would probably chastise the white guy, telling him to get off his deadbeat white ass, quit doing meth, sell his house, load up a trailer, and head on out with his family for parts unknown to find a another job.
The video deprives you of the context for the white man's disaffection for his black co-worker.
Without getting in your way if you want to believe the answer is racism.
It is funny, liberals/progressives used to have a ready word for this sort of thing- "Scabs".
It is hilarious how personal politics makes you do things you know is wrong in journalism.
I am sympathetic to the workers who took the offer- the jobs were going to leave with or without the training- it is foolish to expect otherwise.
"Something similar happens everyday somewhere in the US." And the New York Times could have made this documentary way before 2017.
Manufacturing plants and manufacturing jobs have strategic significance far beyond supporting small towns. You can't have Rosie the Riveter without them, and it takes precious time to reopen and retrain fast food and service workers should the need ever arise. Plant workers may be bitter clingers to some, but they aren't stupid and they have essential knowledge and skills and they work alongside valuable engineers.
Any administration or Congress with long term vision would recognize these losses are detrimental.
Althouse is infatuated w/ "The Daily."
The inevitable disappointment and breakup is gonna be hard on her.
Both parties were able to answer "Yes" to the poll, "do you believe you have faced discrimination"
Why the hell Lenny down the line answered "No" is anyone's guess. Crazy Lenny!
"it is foolish to expect otherwise"
White privilege is foolish.
"The video was over a year old. Trump wasn't President when this happened."
The video went up today: It says "Produced by BRENT McDONALD, JONAH M. KESSEL and JOHN WOO | Oct. 25, 2017 | 14:00."
The podcast was about 10 days ago.
I think the announcement about moving the factory came in December 2016.
Trump should’ve used his super dooper negotiating powers to stop the move. What happened?
Lots of f-bombs in that video. I don't know that surprised me but it did.
Unknown said...Trump should’ve used his super dooper negotiating powers to stop the move. What happened?
He was still in Hollywood when this was made. Grabbing pussy, let's hope...
To clarify, if the New York Times wanted to focus on plant closings, there have been plenty to choose from, starting before 2016. Electrolux and Polaris spring to mind, and Rexnor can't be the first to deal with training a Mexican workforce.
“He was still in Hollywood when this was made.”
If the move was announced in December of 2016, the film was probably shot after that. Trump could’ve been negotiating during the time of the filming, but he was too distracted by the small size of his Inauguration crowd.
"To clarify, if the New York Times wanted to focus on plant closings, there have been plenty to choose from"
Far from just plant closings. The outsource-and-train-your-replacement thing happens everywhere, including companies close to the media centers like Disney and So Cal Ed.
Unions priced their workers out of their jobs. There's no reason to pay someone $27 an hour to make 5 bearings an hour.
For a million dollars you can buy a robot that will make 100 bearings an hour, and you don't even have to buy energy to light the room.
"Unions priced their workers out of their jobs. "
Its not just union workers.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2879083/it-outsourcing/southern-california-edison-it-workers-beyond-furious-over-h-1b-replacements.html
Information technology workers at Southern California Edison (SCE) are being laid off and replaced by workers from India. Some employees are training their H-1B visa holding replacements, and many have already lost their jobs.
The employees are upset and say they can't understand how H-1B guest workers can be used to replace them.
The IT organization's "transition effort" is expected to result in about 400 layoffs, with "another 100 or so employees leaving voluntarily," SCE said in a statement. The "transition," which began in August, will be completed by the end of March, the company said.
"They are bringing in people with a couple of years' experience to replace us and then we have to train them," said one longtime IT worker. "It's demoralizing and in a way I kind of felt betrayed by the company."
"For a million dollars you can buy a robot that will make 100 bearings an hour, and you don't even have to buy energy to light the room."
This is better, as you still need someone to control, maintain, and set up that robotic process, and you need the production engineer and system integration guys. If you need to make changes or upgrades to your product, or R&D, the skills are still there. You lose the bottom of your skills pyramid.
If you outsource they no longer are there. Not only have you lost the bottom of your skill pyramid, but the whole of it.
How large was Hillary's inauguration crowd, Inga?
"Unions priced their workers out of their jobs."
All while they filled political coffers with mandated union dues. But who could have foreseen the professionally printed signs in the minimum wage wars?
Wonder how many of the folks at Rexnord who voted for Trump did so mainly because they thought he'd help them keep their jobs. And then it probably got their hopes up when Trump was able to make a deal to save jobs at the Carrier plant just down the road from them. This all has got to put a dent in any enthusiasm they may have felt for Trump.
Unions acted as a point State-side tariff, that along with environmentalists, provided an incentive for outsourcing and relocation, which, ironically, has been good for lower domestic employment and higher foreign waste, respectively. Fortunately, perpetual smoothing functions, and immigration reform, have managed to obfuscate the relationship, and corrupt human spirit, too.
To expand, re manufacturing -
If you are going to be in the business of making things, you need to be in that business. Its very difficult to keep the high order slices of, say, product innovation, R&D, and technology mastery, unless you are dealing with the physical thing. All the production tech side goes abroad along with the potential for developing these skills. And these skills are not really under your control.
Its not realistic to ship off the factory to China and Mexico and pretend you are still in the manufacturing business.
Odds are you will almost instantly lose your R&D and iterative product improvement capability, that a 100% foreign competitor will pop up using the skills you have exported, and start beating you on price, as their overall enterprise overhead is cheaper than those overhead parts you have retained in the US.
The podcast also highlighted a divide that you don’t see in the video between men and women, with women being more willing than men to train their replacements. Rexnord stock is up 60% since the election, which is about $1 billion in shareholder value, so there’s that.
Buw,
What ya don't understand is that we'll build a wall, and we'll keep out smart foreigners that do better than Americans in grad school, and we'll put 300% tariffs on imports.
Then, 'Murica will dominate the future of the world cause of coal miners and pipelines that move crude from Canada to oil tankers.
It'll be like Germany getting rid of smart Jews and leaving a bunch of idiot white racists running the show. Except I don't think that we'll have Nazis, just fat losers who like their fat, gross leader to lie a lot. Oops, we already have that.
Not responsive PB&J.
Kevin Williamson would probably chastise the white guy, telling him to get off his deadbeat white ass, quit doing meth, sell his house, load up a trailer, and head on out with his family for parts unknown to find a another job.
Lol! Exactly.
Kevin Williamson is a cunt.
buwaya said... [hush][hide comment]
"The video was over a year old. Trump wasn't President when this happened."
Something similar happens everyday somewhere in the US.
This is not rare and it hasn't stopped.
Had a job as a kid that required welding.Old guy says "Why should I teach you so you can take my job?" Didn't understand at the time because I had no desire to take anybodies job. As an adult, became clear the "company" would replace an old slow guy with a kid being paid one third as much.
This is a pretty common problem; when companies change anything, the old-timers often need to work to get the new guys up and running. That may be the last job the old-timers do. We're doing it right now in Pathology at my hospital, which is moving from a homegrown database system to an off-the-shelf product.
Of course, if the old-timers think they can force the company's hand by refusing to help train the replacements, that makes it more interesting. At my hospital that just isn't a possibility.
buwaya: If you are going to be in the business of making things, you need to be in that business. Its very difficult to keep the high order slices of, say, product innovation, R&D, and technology mastery, unless you are dealing with the physical thing. All the production tech side goes abroad along with the potential for developing these skills. And these skills are not really under your control.
I wonder how many Americans out there still believe that the rest of the world (with perhaps the exception of Japan and Germany) just takes care of the low-skill and low-value-added stuff (that we're too advanced to do), while America has an eternal comparative advantage (a rather poignantly misunderstood concept among some segments of our society) in handling all the super-advanced stuff.
This was a very common, almost religiously held belief among the various popular tech/economics fora I've frequented in decades past. (Unlike the manufacturer's blogs I poked my nose into from time to time, whose understanding of these things mirrored your comments here.)
It's been a few years since I frequented those sites. Wonder what the ratio of apostates to true believers is these days.
MikeR: This is a pretty common problem; when companies change anything, the old-timers often need to work to get the new guys up and running. That may be the last job the old-timers do.
[...]
Of course, if the old-timers think they can force the company's hand by refusing to help train the replacements, that makes it more interesting. At my hospital that just isn't a possibility.
I don't think the "old guys almost ready to be put out to pasture training the up-and-coming generation of workers" is analogous to what's being discussed here. Whatever one's views of offshoring, it's not a matter of old training the young (the natural order of things).
Neither is that the case in the H1-B scenario: these aren't near-retirees being replaced, and these aren't "young people being trained". The original ostensible rationale for the visa program (as opposed to the corrupt real intent) was to bring in skills that weren't available in the native work force.
We gave our manufacturing base to China. But hey, the owners got rich. And anyone over 50 invested in those firms via 401k's got a piece too. Average Americans got price breaks that their local ChinaMart and ChinaCo until the jobs went away. It was a good run.
Buw,
At least, there will always be some jobs for normal folks in the States. When my Prius-on-steroids told me that the tire was flat, it let me know that it had already dispatched a service person who couldn't get there for 80 minutes, so--sans my needing to ask-- T was sending me an Uber so I wouldn't need to wait, and then after I'm picked up my car will be repaired and dropped off at my house. Of course it's people making low dough who need to do all this support stuff. And, all sorts-a other low pay stuff too. Jobs created!
Y'all are welcome.
Been there, done that, and didn't even lose my job; I just found myself training much less experienced workers who were doing the same work I was, but making more. I found out quite by accident. Once I brought this to management's attention, I got parity with the new workers. I should've held out for better than parity, and back pay, but I was still practically a kid. Just one who knew a hell of a lot about classical music.
Union thinking is the culprit here. Had these idiots not been convinced that their job knowledge and skills were irreplaceable, the shifting of jobs might never have occurred in the first place. Unions write contracts to limit productivity while increasing hourly wages. The resulting contracts are contested through contentious confrontations and nobody ever gets fired and nobody cooperates with managers.
Down on the border, jobs pay less and jobs are scarce. Mexicans are very hard workers who do what they are told. It is not difficult to understand this if you ever visited a factory there. As for training Mexicans, language is a problem that immediately makes worker training difficult for English-speaking Americans.
I worked for a company which moved to El Paso to employ green card carriers as meat cutters. The first thing that Human Resources did was hire all the bilingual butchers from El Paso supermarkets. They became the line supervisors, who quickly brought productivity and output above the standards of the Chicago meat plant that we closed.
chickelit said...
"We gave our manufacturing base to China. But hey, the owners got rich. And anyone over 50 invested in those firms via 401k's got a piece too. Average Americans got price breaks that their local ChinaMart and ChinaCo until the jobs went away. It was a good run."
While you're busy lambasting capitalists keep in mind that the cost of the regulatory state has a lot to do with a businesses decision to stay or go.
it isn't always greed. Sometimes it's survival.
There's gotta be a similar video of German auto workers fighting training of the American workers in anticipation of the opening of the Alabama factory.
White guy always getting screwed!
@Rusty: If you in the group for giving away your intellectual property, I salute your. I witnessed a company give away it's chemical technology to a Chinese mole.
Just don't be a businessman who shouts up and down for stricter (and expensive) enforcement of IP property laws when you get screwed. Just accept that you gave it up for quick profit and "survival."
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