wbpesch@ihuxp.UUCP (Walt Pesch) (04/18/84)
Gee, Ken, that last one was so good that I almost agreed with you, started singing "Just look for the Union Label", and started toward the car to go blow up a telephone switching station in honor of last summer's telephone strike. Luckily, sanity returned. For the bystanders: This eternal flame is in regards to the eternal in net.flame in regards to management/employee relations. The current fork of the river of flame that is being traveled is whether unions or management should be blamed for the downfall of the blue-collar work establishment in America. Ken's stand: > Yes Walt, if those pesky US steelworkers would work for $1.50 an hour, > you could still pick up your tin plate hot off the press downtown. > But alas, our workforce (organized or not) enjoys a very high standard > of living, and the industry is too preoccupied with its new portfolios > to be bothered making steel. Who's responsible? No matter what Ronnie > may say, even if he never lies, there is no single blame nor single > answer. According to Ken, it is the greed of the management that does not allow manager's to keep the American plants in the most modern ways. However, we can not accept this Democratic buzzwording and jingoism. I will admit that it is the management's decision as to whether the ledger says to continue the expansion based on the profitability. According to you, management is a spiteful being who are solely out to exploit the masses. Ken, that is Bull Shit. Do you seriously consider management would close plants if they were profitable? Now, lets get to why the plants are no longer profitable. Raw material prices I suggest are roughly the same in the US as they are in Japan. Since Japan is mineral-poor, they have to shipmost of their raw materials in. We of course have higher costs in getting and transporting (I'll explain where we get these higher costs from later.) Plant costs have to be roughly the same, for though we have surely depreciated our plants by now, we will be maying higher costs for modernization. This leaves labor. This is the reason for our inability to compete with Japanese products internally, much less internationally. Therefor we don't make a profit. Therefor and ergo, the plants close. I will not say that unions are evil in the idea nor in practice. However, they are a protected commodity by our government. They are not governed by competiton. Unions, truly a business themselves, have an unfair advantage over management in that they are bargaining from the advantage of laws enacted when unions where needed. Let's put unions back into the free market (along with all forms of business) and let supply and demand back into action. I think we have had the chain of Keynsean Economics long enough. By the way, when you want to reference something like: > And now they've thrown in the towel. In some places the workers are > trying to buy the old plants instead of seeing them closed down. I > read of one instance, though, where the company refused, even though > the workers made the highest offer. Please do us the favor of citing your references (e.g. National Enquirer or Pravda, April 1). Facts are all so more believable when we know what reputable rags you are quoting from. I would like to see why any company refused the highest bid - probably because it was still under a reasonable enough offer. Ain't this the reason they call it net.flame? Walt Pesch AT&T Technologies ihnp4!ihuxp!wbpesch
wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (04/19/84)
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I think the plant Ken is talking about that was closed when the
Company would not sell it was featured on last weeks Parade. The
local union made a bid to buy out the Steel plant, the Company
accepted the offer in principle until the union could OK the
deal with the National organization of the union. The high
muckety-mucks at the National level turned thumbs down on the
local union to buy the plant. That is why the company did not
sell the plant to the union. This kind of thing has happened
any number of times recently. The National union does not want
to have to deal with its own members in the bargaining arena.
As a result of the National Unions stupidity, there are now
2300 more steelworkers out of a job in a town that had only
one industry, the steel mill. Ken tells us that the Union
has only the highest of princples and I say Bull Shit too.
More damage has been done to the work force under the guise of
unionism than any other factor over the past twenty years.
Enough, I'm going to renew my card in the Teamsters Union, call
a strike, and go out and shoot a few independent truckers.
T. C. Wheelerbrower@fortune.UUCP (Richard Brower) (04/20/84)
Now just a cotton picking minute here. When there was basically no
competition for (for example) the steel plants in the United States,
there was no reason to modernize because one could charge what one
needed to in order to make a profit. As more modern plants were
built in other countries US steel plants became less and less profitable,
and the costs to modernize became higher and higher. Finally, United
States steel plant owners discovered that they could no longer compete
in the market for steel and put the blame on the unions for negotiating
a living wage for their workers. Also, in looking at the situation,
they found that they could turn a faster buck (increase those quarterly
dividends) by investing in areas other than modernizing their plants.
Therefore, we are now at the level that it is far cheaper to import
steel from Japan (and pay the shipping charges) than to manufacture
it here in the states. And the unions are so easy to blame!
Richard Brower Fortune Systems
{ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,sri-unix,harpo}!fortune!browerwbpesch@ihuxp.UUCP (Walt Pesch) (04/20/84)
And the cry goes out over the net... BULL SHIT
Are you saying that the costs of keeping the plant modern are greater
than the shipping costs for thousands of ocean miles? I definately
find that hard to believe. NO, I won't buy this. The reason still
can be put at the feet of overpriced labor.
Still waiting for the bolt from the skies,
Walt Pesch
AT&T Technologies
ihnp4!ihuxp!wbpeschchenr@tilt.UUCP (Raymond Chen ) (04/20/84)
<Hello>
To take a line from a recent article:
"And the cry goes over the net -- BULL SHIT !!!!"
These days, with the incredibly large and efficient freighters being built
by the Japanese, and the incredibly inefficient and expensive steel-
manufacturing processes used by American steel companies, you'd better
believe that would hurt a steel company that had owned other profit-
making businesses less to ditch a steel plant operating in the red
(and maybe build a new one somewhere else) than it would to take a
huge temporary loss necessary to modernize the plant. By the way,
who do you think manufactures most of the free world's merchant ships? I'll
give you a hint: They were also the one's to invent the supertanker.
I'll give you another hint: J*p*n. Fill in the *.
--
From the Random Fingers of --
Ray Chen
{allegra | ihnp4 | mhuxi}!princeton!down!tilt!chenr
"It's amazing what a thousand monkeys and a few typewriters can accomplish..."saquigley@watmath.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (04/20/84)
> Are you saying that the costs of keeping the plant modern are greater > than the shipping costs for thousands of ocean miles? I definately > find that hard to believe. NO, I won't buy this. The reason still > can be put at the feet of overpriced labor. You can also look at the problem from a different angle. Our labor is not overpriced, labor from other countries is UNDERpriced. labour iJapan is cheaper than it is in America, but Japanese laborers have many advantages that American labourers do not have: job security, and more decision-making power in the workplace. Their society is also structured differently from ours: it is a very traditional (dare I say feudal) society where everybody has a place: nearly half of the workforce, women, is unpaid as it performs housework which is not considered valuable. This allows men to work much harder at their jobs since housekeeping and child care is taken care of by women. The structure is very efficient as nearly everybody has a place in the system. This structure is also based on the idea of responsibility, something clearly lacking in America: workers have a sense of responsibility towards their employers, so will not do things like going on strike which will mean bad business for the company. In return the company is responsible for the security and well-being of its workers and tries to provide a safe work environment and financial security for the workers life. A wife is responsible to her husband to perform her duties as mother and caretaker of the house, but in return husbands are responsible towards their wives to provide for them financially. Whether people actually behave like that is another question, but the system is still based on responsability. If you look at thirld world countries with cheaper labour, you will also find that not only is the labour cheaper, it is most of the time slave labour. Salaries are very low, people cannot afford basic health care, working conditions are often very dangerous. In the "free-trade" zone in Philipines workers often work at gunpoint, to make sure they don't rebel. In Costa Rica banana plantation workers and their families are routinely sprayed with pesticides. In some United fruit plantations in central america, workers are sometimes paid with "tokens" redeamable only the United Fruit stores. So before you destroy the current system, take a look at the alternatives. Sophie Quigley ...!{clyde,ihnp4,decvax,allegra}!watmath!saquigley
zben@umcp-cs.UUCP (04/21/84)
>> The local union made a bid to buy out the Steel plant, the Company >> accepted the offer in principle until the union could OK the >> deal with the National organization of the union. The high >> muckety-mucks at the National level turned thumbs down on the >> local union to buy the plant. If the steel company cannot make money on an old and outdated plant, what makes you think the steelworkers themselves can do any better? The people at the National level were being realists. The local union was merely delaying the inevitable, AND DOING IT WITH RETIREMENT FUND MONIES that are desparately needed by already-retired workers. I think the national level showed good judgement in this case... >> As a result of the National Unions stupidity, there are now >> 2300 more steelworkers out of a job in a town that had only >> one industry, the steel mill. Life's hard all over, buddy, but you can't throw good money after bad. You wanna buy a steel mill? [:-)] -- Ben Cranston ...seismo!umcp-cs!zben zben@UMD2.ARPA
scw@cepu.UUCP (04/21/84)
>Richard Brower Fortune Systems >{ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,sri-unix,harpo}!fortune!brower > >Now just a cotton picking minute here. When there was basically no >competition for (for example) the steel plants in the United States, >there was no reason to modernize because one could charge what one [...] >a living wage for their workers. Also, in looking at the situation, >they found that they could turn a faster buck (increase those quarterly >dividends) by investing in areas other than modernizing their plants. > Damm straight, Thanks to JFK AND HIS PRICE CONTROLS ON STEEL AND STEEL PRODUCTS. >Therefore, we are now at the level that it is far cheaper to import >steel from Japan (and pay the shipping charges) than to manufacture >it here in the states. And the unions are so easy to blame! > Note that it's shipped in Japanese bottoms, 'cause Americian shipping unions are so powerfull that noone can afford to use Americian registry shipping (except for Uncle). > That's very interesting. Just when do you think that we built all of our steel plants anyway? 1860???. Most of our current crop of steel plants were built during the closing stages of WWI or during the 1920's or while tooling up for WWII. There was and still was , and still was compitition too our steel production, and plants were modernized (slowly), a lot of the equiptment in the 1916-1927 plants actually dates from the 1950's. The problem is that Japan's and Germany's Steel industry is in all new factoys (built since WWII) and carried on all new shipping (Japan had almost no ships of > 5000 GRT left at the end of WWII), and produced by a workforce that has a real interest in producing a product, not in feather-bedding. -- Stephen C. Woods (VA Wadsworth Med Ctr./UCLA Dept. of Neurology) uucp: { {ihnp4, uiucdcs}!bradley, hao, trwrb, sdcsvax!bmcg}!cepu!scw ARPA: cepu!scw@ucla-locus location: N 34 06'37" W 118 25'43"