“There is one rule for industrialists and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible” - Henry Ford
Manufacturing is on the rise in the United States as employers bring jobs back to the United States; however, the jobs do not pay what they used to pay. Many manufacturers have forgotten about the Henry Ford quote above. Goods are not as durable as they used to be, nor, in many cases, can they be repaired. Workers do not make enough money to purchase the products they manufacture:
The shrunken pay scale for newcomers — $12 to $19 an hour versus $21 to $32 an hour for longtime workers — threatens to undo the middle-class status of even the best-paid blue-collar jobs still left in manufacturing. A similar contract limits the wages of new hires at a nearby Ford Motor Company stamping plant, but neither G.E.’s 2,000 hourly workers nor Ford’s 2,900, nor their unions nor the mayor, Greg Fischer, have objected.
I understand that $12 to $19 an hour is a lot of money to a lot of folks out there. I do get that, but the problem is we should not be satisfied with the wages our parents were earning twenty years ago today.
....all argue that job creation must take precedence over holding the line on wages, given that the unemployment rate in this Ohio River city is above 9 percent and several thousand people apply for every unfilled, $13-an-hour factory job. “The trade-off is absolutely worth it,” Mayor Fischer said, arguing that while the city is actively subsidizing G.E.’s expansion here, mainly through tax rebates, that is not enough. “You must have a globally competitive wage to create jobs,” the mayor insisted.
As Laura Clawson has pointed out high pay is not the problem in American manufacturing, and German automakers make more profit than their American counterparts yet pay their employees more than double what American autoworkers make.
Is job creation important? Yes. Should we continue down the destructive path of begging companies to open factories by giving them tax breaks to open factories that don't pay a middle-class wage? No. The tax breaks only serve to weaken our communities and put more of the burden on the very people who can least afford it as well as weaken our schools and prevent us from paying for the upkeep of our infrastructure. Corporations need an educated workforce. They need well maintained infrastructure in order to ship goods and services. They need police and fire protection. They need to pay their fair share.
Corporations can begin to pay their fair share by paying their employees a decent middle class wage—and not the decent middle class wage from 20 years ago. The extortion of our communities must stop. No more tax breaks to build a factory and stronger laws at the federal level that punish corporations that move American jobs overseas.
Our country faces some awesome challenges right now, but they are all solvable. The solutions that have been tried so far—cutting wages and benefits as well as giving tax breaks to corporations—have not worked. We need jobs, but we also need jobs that pay good wages. We should not be competing with Mexico, China or the overseas flavor of the year that pays the lowest wages. We need American companies to step up to the plate and do the right thing: Pay American employees enough to purchase the products they build here in America. In short: People need to come before profits and CEO pay.