Inferiority complex might be keeping some American workers down [View all]

[applegrove]

by Jerry Large at the Seattle Times

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/inferiority-complex-might-be-keeping-some-american-workers-down/

SNIP........

Companies can make good profits while paying workers well.

Germany has strong unions, and also German factories have work councils, where managers and workers come together to solve problems outside of union action or management fiat. And the Germans are profitable.

A few years ago the business magazine Forbes ran an article with this headline: “How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much.” It was based on a more detailed piece from remappingdebate.org.

And here’s a headline from the British newspaper The Guardian: “Do American autoworkers have an inferiority complex?” It’s from a piece on automobile plants in the South, and it was written three years ago after workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to reject unionization. The article said the same company pays its German workers more than three times what it pays autoworkers in America.

Now lots of foreign-car manufacturers have plants in the South. They get to say their vehicles are made in America, which helps with sales. They get tax breaks and other incentives and, of course, a cheaper labor force.


............SNIP