sethnintendo said:
mrstickball said:
Jobs wanted to bring the jobs (pun!) back to the US. Unfortunately, the heavy restrictions placed on manufacturers make it very, very expensive to bring the work back here.
Unless you are willing to pay $1,000 for an iPhone, that is. |
I wouldn't say that entirely. Just take Texas for example. You can be pretty much get fired if you try to start a union in any non union factory in Texas. Sure there is a law that says they can't do that but that doesn't stop them with their intimidation or actual firing. I don't even care to address the union factor because it is almost non existent in most manufacturing plants in Texas. Texas also has pretty lax pollution standards and lets companies get away with just a slap on the wrist. I can now move on to wages. Most people in my plant are contract workers. There are probably about 20-30% of the worker force that are hired on. However, even after they hire you on you might even see a wage decrease for those all might benefits (they are actually pretty shitty compared to other jobs benefits). So now you have most on contract not having to worry about health care cost, having paid time off, paid holidays, etc.. You pay a contract company probably 15-20 dollars a hour for each worker they hire on but you eliminate a lot of benefit costs. The contract company then pays the worker 9.50-11 a hour and keeps anywhere from 4-10+ from each worker for every hour. I am an ICT tester for Cisco boards after they come off the SMT line (after x-ray and add-on parts). I first test the boards. Granted my job is basic but there are issues that arise and you can't be completely brain dead. I also have to stand for almost 8 hours a day while I work. I get paid under 11 a hour with the 3rd shift bonus. Even though it is slow sometimes (i work my ass off other times, especially after a tester quit and now they expect me to test for two lines most of the time unless both lines are running max speed). Anyways, it would be nice to get 12+ since I supposedly handle thousands of dollars in server boards each day.
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Of course, all of those things correlate into the fact that Texas braved the huge economic downturn better than most any other state. They've stayed in lockstep with the national average, if not slightly higher. Now they're about 2% lower than the national average.
Additionally, the reason behind hiring out via contract is that the host company (your factory) has regulatory burden than if they hired them full-time, which is why they're doing it. I talked to an assembly line repairman a few weeks ago about it. He travels the US, Mexico and Canada repairing the robots and assembly lines, and said that contractor workers are generally the best way to go, and he's seeing factories do it more and more to stay competitive with what is left... Denoting the fact that you wouldn't need contract workers if the regulatory structure was more favorable to hiring and keeping workers.
Comparatively, if you want to talk about the problems with unions at factories, I bet Kasz would love to chime in about it. Plus, my dad worked with auto unions for about 2 decades... Working with them that long allows you to see how problematic they are in regards to keeping costs reasonable.
