5-in-7 Americans: Cheap Foreign Labor Helped Collapse of Manufacturing Industry

Cpl David Hamilton - I agree with your statement.
Though I would like to add that as you stated "Our workers were not willing to reduce their pay".
But I would like to point at.
The foreign workers are working at dollar amounts below the minimum wage that US workers can be paid.
So is it that the US workers are not willing to reduce their pay or the law says you can not pay less than?

I'll use an example of a paper mill in Kimberly WI about 10 years ago. They had approximately 600 jobs making paper. This mill was just purchased by another company and was in the process of modernizing the mill with new machinery as at the time the newest mill line was 90 years old. They did an audit of how much the cost of paper made per ton @ Kimberly vs the Chinese the main competitive source. They approached the labor force with the request that everyone on the mill take a 30% reduction in pay so as they can compete with the Chinese and keep their sourcing contracts. The Chinese, Koreans and Indonesians at this time was dumping coated paper at a very cheap rate. They show all the math that anyone could reason was if they didn't reduce this cost they would be in the red every month. The company gave the employees 1 month to decide if they would agree to the basic terms or they would close the mill. The Union bosses from Chicago told them the company is lying and just wanted to lower the wages to increase their profit margin. The employees foolishly believed the union and on the 31st day the mill was permanently shut down, stripped and demolished. At that time the minimum wage in the mill was about $22 an hour and many were making over $40 straight time. Now this was a community where the average house was well around $150 K. These were my high school classmates who stated they couldn't survive with that kind of pay rate cut. Now many of them still of working age make less than $15 an hour.

Cpl David Hamilton - I hear ya and agree. But I was really pointing at the workers in other countries working for $40 a month.

Yes, in other 3rd world countries that happens all the time. At one time we were the cheap labor for goods and supplies to Europe in the 16 -18th century. Then it moved to other areas of the world when we became more economically stronger. After WWII you could get cheap goods out of Europe and Japan. We could not economically fail from 1946 through the early '70s as we had no real competition. Then in the '80's the Japanese and Germans started to be a 1st world economic power and then Korea and Philippines were developing. They became stronger and the cheap labor is Indonesia, India, China, Mexico and other parts of South America. As they get economically stronger the cheap labor will be from Africa. There is never an end of the source of cheap labor, the problem comes along with the quality of work and goods.

You should look into the army of humans that have to program the robots, those that have to position those robots, teach and make adjustments of the robots. Those that have to maintain the robots, and those that remove used worn out robots. Many of these robots take extra anchoring to the floor or hung from the ceiling or from an upper rail system. All of which has to be built, maintained and installed by humans for the robot. What has been mentioned here has created new industries that revolve around the robots, all run by humans.
Its like looking at the Navy prior to the aircraft carriers and then after the aircraft carriers. Now saying that because the Iowa class 16 inch battleships guns are no longer relevant in the future battles. Therefore there will be less people due to less ships. When in reality we now know the huge numbers of people that man the Carriers at all times and the extra people that arrive when the jets arrive. Of course the Carriers need constant replenishment of a larger size compared to a Battleship, meaning that there are small armies of navy personal ordering, filling and maintaining those supply ships with all of the different supply items that Carrier needs.
Now that your totally bored I'm postulating that these are much of the same.
When automobiles came online for the public the horse trade, saddle makers and carriage makers with the wagon makers slowly faced reduction or faced with going out of business. But the Auto Industry created huge opportunity for workers.
These robots do not design themselves.
They do not install themselves.
They do not program themselves.
They do not maintain and repair themselves.
They do not remove themselves when they have expired.
They do not recycle themselves.