10.08.11
Don’t hold your breath (continued)
More anecdotal news journalism spun off the Boston Consulting Group’s glorified press release claim that jobs will be moving back from China.
On the margins, perhaps, as this excerpt tells me:
“While Chinese labour costs are rising, US competitiveness has been improving,??? says Mei Xu, the Chinese-born co-owner of Chesapeake Bay Candle, which makes candles and other home fragrance products. “We can invest in automation to make our candles in a factory near Baltimore for a similar cost to doing the same job in China.???
Chesapeake Bay Candle has created 50 jobs, with another 50 likely next year, since it invested in US production. Half of the company’s production is now US-based. Last year all of its products were made in China.
While some will say “it’s jobs,” they’re only dribs and drabs, by magnitude unless multiplied by tens to hundreds of thousands of instances, not statistically significant enough to make a difference in the country’s mass unemployment debacle.
Lacking from the two stories this week — wage level and benefits — which, if they’re typical of US 2011, do nothing to address inequality and inability to provide a living.
Bringing jobs back at a level where people still are eligible for food stamps isn’t a thing to crow about. It’s just chasing pseudo-slave labor around the globe once US levels of labor compensation have stabilized at such a low level the government must subsidize families lest people starve.
Unlike the ABC News story, the Financial Times piece puts a skeptic into the piece.
“What’s going to stop the current trickle of extra employment from becoming a real trend is the behaviour by the Chinese government in persistently finding ways to help its domestic manufacturers,??? said a lobbyist for American manufacturers to the publication.
The Financial Times piece is here.
You’ll have to go along way, not just be someone in a suit with a press release, to prove it’s reversing the dominance of Chinese-made deluxe rock & blues harmonicas, guitars, toilet seats and stub wrenches.
Good news, lads! Good news! It’s the Pasadena Consulting Group’s manufacturing report.
Chuck said,
October 8, 2011 at 9:16 am
Re: your stub wrench article. I picked up a package of hacksaw blades with an American name on them for cutting some mild steel angle iron. I slipped one into my hacksaw, made about three strokes and then noticed that any resistance to pushing or pulling had suddenly vanished.
Looking at the blade, I saw that the teeth on the blade had vanished! Apparently, the manufacturer had forgotten to harden the blades before applying a coat of bright yellow paint. I took my blades back to the store and was offered another package of the same. I suggested that they might take the prudent approach and test a random sample to see all suffered from the same problem. Were that the case, then the blades had no business hanging on the rack. I was dismissed by saying that the matter would be relayed to management. Two months later, the same blades were still hanging on the rack.
So the problem really has two aspects–junk being produced offshore and merchants and customers who refuse to do anything about it. We are the enemy.
On a brighter note, after shopping around for a new radiator for my truck and being told that all replacement radiators are made by one factory in China, I gave up and went with the local NAPA store. When I opened the box, I was surprised to see that the radiator bore a “Made in Canada/Fabriqué au Canada” tag. You could have knocked me over with a feather–and the thing came with a lifetime guarantee.
When I was working as an instrumentation technician in a steel mill a very long time ago, I was advised by my foreman that “You can’t afford cheap tools.” That’s even more true today.
George Smith said,
October 8, 2011 at 12:13 pm
Yeah, Chuck, I don’t get the thing where all the items are broken-before-sale and allowed to hang on the rack. It’s a trap for customers and shows the corporate masters of the store allow absolutely no initiative in their employees. It speaks to an entrenched incompetence in corporate America, somehow felt to be a feature because it means your employees are so stupid and powerless they won’t … what, quit … ask questions? Who knows.