Blue-collar workers hanging on by thread

[emilyg]

Garden City -- They arrive at work at 7:25 a.m. and many of their cars are rusting buckets of crud. Except for the boss's. He drives a Volvo.

Walk in the door at Schaefer Screw Products and there is the enemy -- the clock. The oil vapors and solvents are overwhelming. The yellow light is dispiriting. The workers don't want to be here. The liquor bottles in the weedy lot out back tell part of the story. The graffiti in the bathroom -- profanely denouncing "hard workers" -- tells the rest.

The workers punch the clock at precisely 7:30 a.m., not a minute later since they would be docked 14 minutes and nobody in America works 14 minutes for free. A quiet resignation settles over them as the roar of the screw grinding machines rev up. Want it or not, they need to be here. After this place, there is no place. Not in today's America.






This machine shop may be the next wobbling domino in the collapse of the American manufacturing sector and the struggles of its blue-collar workers. There are at least seven shops nearby that are available for lease.

Schaefer Screw is in an industrial section of Garden City north of Ford Road, about two miles west of Detroit.

My brother Bill Parker and his wife Kim work there. Bill, 35, made $70,000 shuffling subprime mortgages for Rock Financial in 2006. He used to wear suits and now he wears oily jeans



From The Detroit News: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100225/METRO08/2250419/LeDuff--Blue-collar-workers-hanging-on-by-thread#ixzz0gcAfmbdi

[endless october]

1. bring manufacturing back to America. nt

[HeresyLives]

2. How?

All advanced nations are having this problem, not just the US.

[truedelphi]

5. Well let's start by insisting that if we are going to have that nuclear power plant

"renaissance" that Obama keeps mentioning, then the components for those plants need to be manufactured right here.

I have a small problem each year when I go out to garden. My garden hose leaks. Back in the day, when I could buy a hose manufactured in the USA, I paid top dollar, but the hose lasted years.

Now I have to replace the Chinese or Bangladesh-made item every single year.

Do we really want those kinds of problems from connectors inside the nuke plants? Cheap hoses and connectors, but leaking ones? And all adding to our trade deficit in China.

Obama, bring back American manufacturing jobs, or glow in the dark a decade from now!

[HeresyLives]

8. You can't 'bring back' manufacturing.

The products from elsewhere are cheaper, simple as that.

You couldn't afford things made solely in America.

Many countries have nuclear plants, and they work just fine.

The whole nuclear industry originally got shut down because of Three Mile Island.

[anonymous171]

6. Protectionism. How else? nt

[HeresyLives]

7. And then no one will buy your exports either.

How will that help you?

[anonymous171]

9. Except that never happens. nt

[HeresyLives]

10. Yes, it does.

Just because people bought your exports in the 50s, when the whole world was trashed after the war, doesn't mean they need to buy them from you today.

[endless october]

11. couple ideas.

1. a national infrastructure building project. build nuclear and other non-CO2 producing electrical power facilities. also, repair roads bridges. fund this by ending the wars.

2. end all tax breaks for companies that outsource manufacturing. give American manufacturers a better chance at government contracts.

3. consider tariffs.

that should do a lot to help our economy. there is no reason that it should be next to impossible to find a shirt or an electrical cord that is made in the US.

[JanForFairness]

3. Losing our jobs and livelyhood

There is no doubt in my mind that our soft leadership and the radical conservatives clinging on the the remnants of the pasts are turning out new age into an era of disparity and confusion for the hard working people of our union!

keep up the fight!

[The_Casual_Observer]

4. It took 25 years to begin to feel the full effect of the "post-industrial"

America. The result is surplus population on a grand scale. Public & private services can't be sustained if there isn't a base of manufacturing creating new wealth from raw materials. China & 3rd world countries understand this obvious fact that has long ago been forgotten by the nitwits in Washington that created the trade policies.