Illinois Corporations Continue Exporting Jobs to Mexico
Maytag announced today that it will lay off even more workers at it's Herrin, IL plant this January. The company was roundly blasted for closing its Galesburg, IL plant just over a year ago and shipping 1,600 jobs to Mexico. At the time, the company said it was closing the Galesburg plant due to declining profits. However, Maytag's annual report showed a 48% increase in profits.
The Maytag move to Mexico is part of an increasing trend. Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot are demanding lower and lower wholesale prices, openly encouraging manufacturers to relocate overseas. The result? The U.S. trade deficit reached a record high $600 billion in 2005, and 25% of mass lay-offs in the U.S. have been linked to overseas outsourcing.
According to a study by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, covered by In These Times:
Of course, if you ask the Chamber of Commerce, its all about lawsuits, venue, and tort reform.
Despite the trend toward outsourcing white-collar jobs, Bronfenbrenner and Luce found that more than four-fifths of job shifts were still in manufacturing industries and more than one-third of the estimated 400,000 jobs shifted went to Mexico. But China is in second place, and rapidly rising in popularity. They also found that companies disproportionately target unionized jobs, which represent 39 percent of all jobs shifted out of the United States but only 8.2 percent of the private workforce. The Midwest has been hardest hit, most of all Illinois, which in the first three months of 2004 lost at least 7,555 jobs—almost all to Mexico.
13 comments:
I would love to make money by opening a business school in India or China that makes sure that its graduates speak immaculate English and are familiar with US business laws, regulations, customs, and strategies. The school would also develop relationships with major US corporations to get the grads working in America doing the jobs that most CEOs do for a few million for 6 figures. Then the CEOs can get a taste of their own medicine.
You clearly haven't spent looking around who's inside a major corporation these days.
note I dropped the word American.
Corporations are far more International than labor unions that once thought themselves international.
Check my earlier post on Illinois's dying cities.
Protectionism isn't going to help much. It only makes things worth. Protecting steel jobs in Sterling Illinois just cost longersmen in Milwaukee their jobs.
A recent 'Frontline' special on Wal-Mart reported that the trade imbalance with China is at least 10-1 in their favor.
American workers are getting the royal shaft from their government by not demanding parity.
It is these kind of things that electing a liberal Democrat or conservative Republican has NO EFFECT on whatsoever.
It's sickening.
Your right Colonel -- and while the Alito hearings dwell on questions of abortion, no one asks whether surrendering U.S. autonomy to WTO was Constitutional.
There is a bakery on Western Ave. it is doing pretty good, but many of my neighbors fill their freezers with bread from Sams Club or Wal-Mart. One Saturday, in between my daughters basketball games in Chicago Ridge, I took a drive through the lot of Wal-Mart on Harlem to sneak a smoke and listen to the Oldies Channel. I can't tell you how many Union Local S0-And-SO bumper stickers I saw in the parking lot.
We talk a good game, but self-intertest or basic laziness helps rig that game. Get bread at the bakery; shop locally; shop your convictions and maybe some of those jobs will stay here.
YAWN...I'll save you the time YDD, just conlude all your posts with "it's Bush's fault" and save yourself the time.
Sooner or later there will be an ugly incident where one of these executives is killed by an outsourced employee. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that it hasn't taken place yet.
I don't condone such an action. I loathe the idea of making a martyr out of some scumbag who is intent on sucking out every last cent of profit at the cost of the workers who made his success possible. But if this keeps up something ugly will take place.
This a tough problem and it get's bogged down with emotional stuff about Walmart.
Bill Testa and Chicago's Fed Reserve Bank does a blog and is talking about the midwests economy.
Read him.
He talks about the micro economies in the midwest and,
....public policies to enhance or support local commerce might deserve more emphasis. I see no conflict here; these policy arenas are complementary rather than in competition. We can metaphorically think of the highly integrated binational Great Lakes region as a single factory or service company. Our efforts to encourage free flowing and efficient commerce within the region will serve to strengthen our ability to produce goods and services for trade with the world, which in turn will result in more income for the region’s households and businesses.
Everyone running for Governor ought to address this. It will be interesting to see how this rolls out for the Republicans in Naperville debates.
Jobs out...illegal immigrants in...sounds logical.
anon 9:25, Go back and dig out the Trib's story on Meat Packing industry in Prophetstown, Illinois.
It was immigrants in and more jobs eventually (and higher mean income), but it didn't happen over night or without pain.
But it's a model for the rest of the state.
go back to work Bill
If it were such a good deal to make appliances in Herrin, why doesn't one of the Unions fund a startup operation to make white-goods there?
If there is opportunity to start a competing business, why not go ahead and start one?
JBP
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