Blue Collar Workers

In his article “Globally Ready” President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, Marc Tucker, argues the new world of work demands young people with high-level skills who are globally aware. Tucker explores how in the 1970’s falling prices for transporting manufactured goods made it possible for companies to relocate their facilities where they could get workers with the necessary skills at the lowest possible cost. This outsourcing left millions American’s who held low-skilled jobs unable to work due to their inability to compete and perform in the job market that now required a higher level of expertise. Tucker additionally explains that although wages have risen greatly, within striking comparison of U.S. wages, in outsourced countries

This week’s reading, “Perspectives on Globalization”, and the film, “Maquilapolis: City of Factories”, both show how maquiladoras take advantage of cheap labor in Third World countries. The reading says, “These imperatives, coupled with inexpensive labor and other lower costs in Third World Countries, as well as technological innovations that make it relatively simple for manufacturing plants to shut down at one sit and re-open at another…” (289), companies will open up maquiladoras in one country for a while and then leave to another country once they find even cheaper labor. This is shown in the film when maquiladora worker Carmen Duran speaks about how Sanyo, the company she worked for, shut down their factories and left Mexico. Carmen

This onslaught of capitalism directly revolutionized modern industrialism as well as the industrial city. Machines morphed the predominately agricultural nation to a herd of factory and corporate workers. Swarms of people, both native and immigrant, flocked to major cities. “The present century has been marked by a prodigious increase in wealth-producing power. The utilization of steam and electricity, the introduction of improved processes and labor saving machinery, the greater subdivision and grander scale of production, the wonderful facilitation of exchanges, have multiplied enormously the effectiveness of labor.”(George, p.20) The major problem with this newfound industrialism was the way in which the workforce was treated. Capitalism was supposed to provide a way out, a way ascend the financial and social staircase, if you worked hard enough. This however was not the case, if you were a loyal, hardworking employee you simply got to keep your job, and if you were in any way injured or incompetent you were fired.

Globalization is having a huge effect on most cities across the United States of America, no matter the size, The role it plays is extremely obvious in the town of Columbus Indiana. It has recently started facing more issues of globalization as Cummins, the city’s largest company, has started to expand. They have needed to bring in talent and employees from across the globe. This has changed the way a lot of local businesses run, including Aaron Joslin. Mr. Joslin has worked for his own company since his father hired him out of high school, “I have seen this company grow from a weekend hobby, my father had when I was young, to now being a job that takes more than forty hours a week and an increased warehouse size.”(Joslin).

While Globalization helped create NAFTA and the negative effects associated with it, globalization has played an even larger role in the transfer of manual labor out of America. Within in recent years, the amount of hard labor jobs has steadily declined in America. Manufacturing jobs have been offshored in

by globalization because their jobs could be easily automated as compared to high-skill workers. When Quinn’s company shifted production outside of the United States, he felt his job “was stolen” by Mexicans. Furthermore, manufacturing plants were often the core of community life in many small towns like Janesville, Wisconsin. Not only did outsourcing and plant closures threatened a worker’s wage, it also jeopardized their “identity” because they often measured their “self-worth” by their employment and ability to provide for their families. As one unemployed worker mentioned, "liberalizing world trade should not harden the lives of ordinary working people.” Therefore, globalization creates a complex problem in which many blue-collar workers became the “loser” who “needed to be compensated” because the gains of free trade were not

Many American workers are at risk of losing their jobs to man-made machinery. One author, Adam Davidson,wrote “Making It in America,” and he argues that American workers are more beneficial and cost efficient than machinery. He uses his interview with Standard Motor Products employee, Maddie Parlier, to build his argument. Maddie is a low educated worker who was forced to take the job at SMP when she became pregnant her senior year of high school. Though she was quick and effective working the laser-welding machine, the unskilled job increased her chance of being replaced by a machine. Many manufacturing companies have found machines more efficient, but don’t realize the effect on American workers. Davidson builds his credibility with logical facts and statistics, and displaying emotional appeals to influence the audience; however, by the end of his article, his ability to influence his readers with his supporting facts strengthens his argument.

Critics see outsourcing as impacting both domestic and foreign countries in a negative way. Domestic economics falters since business is transferred to outside sources, therefore local employment suffers, prices may rise, and people may lose their jobs. The United States loses about 230,000 jobs a year due to outsourcing and new jobs are not crated that frequently or rapidly, therefore local unemployment rises. At the same time, the US also loses skills due to outsourcing. Developing countries also experience global stratification where, even though the imported business upgrades social conditions, social demarcation and hierarchy occurs where the labor class is exploited by newly formed elite. This is called "Global stratification". Consequences may be disastrous not only for the country

Growing up my mother, two uncles, grandmother, and countless family friends worked in a factory called Golden Brand. My mother spent over 10 years with the company but in 2008 they had to close their doors to all of the workers that were loyal to them for the majority of their lives because Moores which is a men’s suit retailer decided to start having their suits made in China so they could pay workers a much cheaper salary. This sent older workers like my grandmother into an early retirement since no one would be willing to hire someone who did not speak English nor French and was not in her 30s anymore. It also made single parents like my mother worry about where she would get the money to feed myself as well as my two older siblings. Globalization has touched myself and my family personally right here in Quebec.

The modern day American society hosts a broad spectrum of industries with various occupations and professions to engage today’s workforce. America, much like most first world countries is a service economy based on the exchange of knowledge and expertise rather than materials and products. People have a long history of work and work evolution that has ultimately brought America to a service economy producing both strengths and weaknesses within the society and its economy. As America has moved to a service economy, much of the manufacturing and production jobs have moved oversees to third world countries creating a reliance on other economies. This globalization of the workforce as well as unionization, and the

To ensure a community's survival, it's very much dependent on the employment of the community. In one part of Brooklyn, New York, a number of unemployed Puerto Ricans were living in extreme desperation state. However they are living next to the employed blue collar workers who have provide them the necessities of community's social institutions. As long as it does not become overbearing in the economic reality, the community would still be able to accept the

Moreover, “Economists have argued that the US factory worker who loses his job to Mexico or China is being given an opportunity to do better; that factory job is being replaced by a job as a software engineer or some other such that if the factory worker takes advantage of the opportunity will leave him far better off, not just financially, in the long run” (Snider 13). Undoubtedly, this concept is key when considering how globalization has started to infiltrate the way our national economy works as of today. Rising wage demands and higher taxes force corporations and employers to seek out other sources for locating their labor force. We must ensure that businesses seek out the creation of jobs within the United States and end this cycle of fleeing the country to locate elsewhere. Finally, “Emerging markets have been thrown into a constant state of turmoil from which they cannot actually emerge no matter what they do” (Snider 16). Entering into a state of recession does not only drastically affect the US but even moreso other nations around the globe. China and Brazil have reached a point of no return in a sense. Their economies have become even more unstable following the recession with next to no growth in their economic

If businesses don’t export jobs overseas, they need to find new ways to remain competitive in the global markets. This can come in the form of pay cuts for employees, which also harms the economy since there is less disposable income (businessweek.com). Again Mourdoukoutas (2011) offers his support by stating globalization can lead communities to escape the unemployment trap by devaluating currency and raising trade barriers. China currently employs the currency devaluating tactic to maintain their edge in American markets. This makes American products more expensive to obtain in China, as opposed to their inferior, cheaper products. This causes American based businesses to seek new creative ways to lower production costs to remain competitive in Chinese markets.

While on the other hand, globalization[pic] wrought financial ills to our domestic economy. Revenues and duties were being enjoyed by the host country and draining us of talents and sometimes, valuable technology as well. Not only that, this has also spur a lot of companies to open merger initiatives which more often at the expense of displaced employees.

This unfortunate outcome of globalization is something that was expressed heavily during the recent 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (as well as early on in his campaign), and continues to flourish after the regrettable inauguration of the latter. The bulk of Trump’s campaign was an attempt to pit the American people against others (as well as themselves with the racist ideologies he proposes). Trump claimed that the outsourcing of jobs from companies in the United States to other countries (according to him, mainly Mexico) was America’s biggest problem, even though his own and his family’s companies do the same thing on a large scale without fault. Though they are American companies that are doing the outsourcing and, therefore, the process that Trump and his supporters want to be destroyed, the blame is constantly put on the country/countries that receive the business, even though their people need jobs too. Continuously calling out Mexico for “stealing our jobs” (and