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Why go metric when it is much
easier to shut the factory down and move the work to China? It is a
win-win situation. You can have your products made in metric, with low
cost metric supplies. No double the cost. And best of all you have
workers who work in metric naturally and wouldn't whine about having to do
it.
The USMA has the perfect opportunity to exploit the
situation of exporting jobs by bringing attention to the fact that imported
Chinese goods are metric made. If we were metric and had a positive
attitude towards metric, some of those jobs would still be in the US.
Euric
Census: 170,000 Ohio jobs lost
By
Paul A. Long
Post staff reporter Ohio has seen 170,000 people lose their jobs since April 2000, according to numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. That translates to an unemployment rate that rose from 5 percent to 7.9 percent at the end of 2003, the numbers show. The Census data also shows that unemployment and poverty have increased in Kentucky. Kentucky has 35,000 more people unemployed and 55,000 more people living below the poverty line than it did three years ago, according to the data. The numbers show that the state's unemployment level jumped from 5.8 percent to 7.5 percent since April of 2000 to the end of 2003. "If you look at the economy, you know we've been suffering," said Ron Crouch, the executive director of the Kentucky State Data Center in Louisville. Manufacturing jobs are being replaced with service and retail jobs, he said. "It's a trend we have to be concerned about," he said. "With the economy going to service and retail economies, education is going to be the key." The data, based on survey samples by the Census Bureau, is broken down only by states, and cities and counties of more than 250,000 people. But corresponding data for previous years is available only statewide, or for cities and counties of more than 1 million people. It shows that the city of Cincinnati has an unemployment rate of 10.9 percent, with nearly 16,000 people in the city looking for work. Some 12,000 families lived below the poverty line in the city. The numbers for all of Hamilton County were significantly better. Just 6.9 percent of the county's residents were unemployed, a total of 28,000 people. Just under 18,000 families lived below the poverty line. Figures for Butler County show that unemployment and poverty are not limited to the inner cities. With an estimated 255,000 people over the age of 16, Butler County's working-age population is slightly larger than Cincinnati's 221,000. Butler County has some 12,000 people out-of-work, an unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. It has 8,909 families living below the poverty line. Statewide, Ohio is in the middle (24th) in its percentages of high school graduates (86 percent), but near the bottom (40th) in the percentage of those 25 or older with a bachelor's degree (23 percent). It's 22nd in the percentage of people living below the poverty level in the past 12 months (12.1 percent, or 1.3 million people), and 20th in the percentage of children living in poverty (10.2 percent).
Manufacturers detail erosion of Ohio jobsEvent aims to spark grass-roots movement
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Thomas W. Gerdel Plain Dealer Reporter Bruce Cain, president of Xcel Mold and Machine Inc. and one of its owners, said he recently had to lay off 10 experienced workers from his production shop in North Canton. The maker of molds for plastic-making parts machines has seen customers buy more molds in China.
"Our best customer, which had done $1 million to $2 million worth of business with us, is now down to about $20,000," Cain said after attending a town hall meeting in Independence sponsored by the Northeast Ohio Campaign for American Manufacturing, or NEOCAM. The group wants to draw attention to the erosion of manufacturing jobs in Ohio and hopes to spark a grass-roots movement to come up with ways to preserve and enhance manufacturing. "We need to let people know what's going on," said Gordon Barr, president of NewKor Inc., a Cleveland maker of paper tubes and canisters. Barr, who also is co-chairman of NEOCAM's steering committee, said his own firm has lost business supplying tubes for a premium line of paint roller covers because the covers are now produced in China. He has had to scramble to find new markets to keep his 25 employees busy. Several hundred people filled the grand ballroom at the Holiday Inn for the town hall meeting Thursday night. NEOCAM handed out petitions urging the Bush administration and Congress to take stronger action against China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, countries the group charges with currency manipulation to gain unfair market advantages. For example, Chinese exports to the United States continue to soar, and yet China keeps its yuan pegged at 8-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, unchanged since 1995. Dave Pritchard, president of A.J. Rose Manufacturing Co. in Avon, passed around two automotive parts made by his stamping firm. He personalized the factory work by reading out loud the names of workers involved in producing the parts and he listed the dollar amount of various taxes that depend on his plants' staying in business. "Manufacturing boils down to making things," Pritchard told the audience. "If a part is not made, government does not get the taxes." With plants closing, communities are losing tax income. Since 1998, Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs, a 20 percent decline, and groups such as the National Tooling and Machining Association partly blame passage of free-trade agreements that have shifted work to Mexico, Canada and other countries. Those free-trade agreements were rammed through Congress with no idea of the impact on small and medium-sized firms, said Matthew Coffey, president of the tooling association. Outsourcing, consolidation and the recession have led to the loss of about 4,000 member firms down more than a quarter in the last three years. Coffey said trade agreements were fashioned to benefit large transnational companies with little input from smaller firms down the business chain. Typically, companies shift production from country to country in search of cheap labor, while many small firms face scrambling for work via Internet auctions, where prices are often set in other countries. Another speaker, Ned Hill, a professor of economics at Cleveland State University, said manufacturing is still a key to Ohio's competitive advantage and accounted for much of the state's productivity increases in the 1990s. Nationally, the state ranks third in manufacturing. But Hill's economic charts also showed gross product per manufacturing job in Ohio has fallen below the national average in the last five years, a troubling sign. "More and more of our economic base is turning into commodities," Hill told the gathering. "We'd better get better in developing new products." To help Ohio manufacturers compete, Hill proposed changes in the state tax system, and he said the Chinese currency should be adjusted somewhat to reflect the huge trade deficit. But some in attendance said they heard nothing to really address the problems facing local manufacturers. "It's more serious than what they presented," said Ray Haserodt, whose Cleveland company, Automatic Stamp Products Inc., makes parts for household appliances and other products. Two years ago, the company's largest customer "picked up and went to China," Haserodt said. The firm cut its staff from about 50 to 30 and has been struggling ever since, he said. "We're still trying to replace the business." Haserodt said some kind of dramatic change has to be made to keep manufacturers from closing. "Somehow we have to have a level playing field," he said. To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: [EMAIL PROTECTED], 216-999-4114 | |||||||||||||||
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