Meet Obama's New Manufacturing Whiz, Ron Bloom

[willbird]

Originally Posted by MetaRinka

The idea of actually paying skilled tradesmen a decent living wage is a dead idea because it always effects L&O rates and the cost gets directly pushed onto the consumer. This is why I switched from being a welder and machinist and became an engineer. People treat you a whole lot differently just by being on the other side of the blue prints.

I fail to see how one type of employee compensation gets "directly pushed onto the consumer" and another type does not ??

Bill

[gmatov]

I'd like an explanation of how a dime raise on the floor can make a product unaffordable, yet 25 million or more in executive bonuses don't have an effect.

Better, how can a company not make money, LOSE money, yet the executive suite still gets bonuses.

USSteel, my Co., we lost money a few years ago, no profit sharing, CEO got 11 million in "performance pay", minions also got millions in bonuses.

I think we have about 15 thou people still working. Company says that Labor is less than ONE buck per ton. (Could have been 10 bucks, whatever) 7000 tons ran through my mill every day.

500 or so for hotrolled out the door and every operation on it raised the price by 50 bucks per ton. Pickle, cold roll, galvanize, anneal, continuous anneal.

"A return to the days where a skilled tradesman made more money than ANY 2 year college graduate, and more than a decent portion of 4 year college graduates is completely contrary to the liberal "never had a freaking job in my life" mindset of most politicians."

You have never seen those days, and I doubt you ever will. There was not a day when a tradesman, good though he may be, made more on an even basis than a management man with or without a degree, unless you include overtime, and in the "olden days", that was over 12 hours before an enlightened government mandated overtime.

Turn of the Century (1900, not 2000) men worked 12 hours per day and 8 on Saturday, at 10 to 15 cents per hour, and if the Boss needed to build a new manse, he would cut your pay to finance it. NO overtime pay, you were lucky to get your hourly rate.

Today, the survivors are near that same state. Boss says he needs you to stay late, off the clock, are you gonna tell him you are going to the wage and Hour people? People are too scared for their jobs. WalMArt got nailed for tons of money for just that, working people off the clock. If WalMart can't get away with it, how can your boss?

Ah, I know. He has YOUR job in his fist. He can crack your nuts, and if you are alone, you can't fund a challenge. If he did this to a 1000 of you, like WalMart did, you can make a suit that has enough potential to interest a lawyer.

I doubt that the sweeper made near as much as a man on the line. Be that as it may, I don't think that a lower paid employee should be paid so low that he has to go on food stamps with a full time job.

35 years ago, we settled a potential strike in the Westinghouse. We had an elite in the mill. Testers. Technical people, NOT Engineers, just got the job, learned it, made big money compared to the people who built the machines they tested. They made nearly double the money of the floor people. Maybe 4 bucks an hour. Contract gave everybody half a buck. Testers were pissed that they used to make twice as much, now just 40% more.

Keep at it, eventually them peons will be making enough to buy houses next door to them.

We want more to keep people from making enough to catch up with us than to think about the rising tide thing, raising all boats.

wilbird answered thru better than I could have. I would have been more confrontive . You know damned well that costs "down there" are so close to the costs "up here" that it is idiotic to argue that your "work ethic" allows you to live on half the pay.

Cheers,

George

[willbird]

Originally Posted by gmatov

"A return to the days where a skilled tradesman made more money than ANY 2 year college graduate, and more than a decent portion of 4 year college graduates is completely contrary to the liberal "never had a freaking job in my life" mindset of most politicians."

You have never seen those days, and I doubt you ever will. There was not a day when a tradesman, good though he may be, made more on an even basis than a management man with or without a degree, unless you include overtime, and in the "olden days", that was over 12 hours before an enlightened government mandated overtime.

To be sure I am clear about what I was saying, I am not referring to employees and their supervisors and mgmnt within the same company. What I am getting at is this.

If we selected a random pool of (100) journeyman tool and die makers, (100) 2 year degree college graduates, and (100) 4 year college graduates.......that the further we go back in time from today the more of the journeyman tool and die makers would have made more than the 2 and 4 year college graduates.

I saw and see this within the people I graduated high school with in 1983. The effect is especially evident if you factor in the 2 or 4 year "dead time" in earnings.....without even considering the cost of college. The tool and die maker in most cases spends some time in school each week that he/she is not paid for.

Bill

[jdj]

Originally Posted by Mud

If you can prove that that has been done, I'd like to see it please. I have no ax to grind here, I want the truth to be known. I don't like deception or untrue assertions in either political direction.

I don't have a bit of proof. I only meant that the clips of the speech and their titles seemed to be arranged conveniently, possibly to break up the context in which things were said. Hence, my last sentence (question) in my post.

Jeff

[MachinistChest]

Bush admin didn`t need a better policy to help manufacturing...unemployment was at 4.6 % there was nothing to fix!

MC

[gmatov]

Bill,

Three of the guys I worked with in the mill had 4 year degrees and teaching certs. While waiting for a teaching position, they went to the mill.

Two in my crew said they worked the first year, OT and all, and made over 8 thou. Teaching paid about 5 thou. Bye-Bye teaching.

FF to 5 years ago, they are making about 42 thou straight time, 60 or so with all the OT they can beg, and the Co is always trying to cut that out, and a teacher of their age with their seniority would be making between 60 and 70, in my SD, and they are in Allegheny Co.,think Pittsburgh, PA, so they would be in the 70 to 80 thou for a little over 9 months in the classroom. "Ah, if only I'd known."

As to you and your cohort. I'll consider you to be one of the brighter, more ambitious of the class. I'll even give you that you are making pretty good money. And that a fair percentage of them are working rather menial jobs, say less than 15 bucks an hour.

I'd wager that there are some of them who moved up and make more than you. We had, in a grad class of 127, several who became physicians, one, at least, an IRS auditor, another an FBI agent, several teachers, couple who became VPs of local banks, realtors, 2 who bought and ran tool trucks servicing mechanic shops ( content of the trucks is probably worth more than my house, at least at their inflated prices).

Nother friend, weldor, from the mill, wife is a couple years younger. She was making over 60 as a teacher, and he, with 36 year's service made the same as me, straight time, about 42 thou.

That some of the unemployed are, how did he put it..."If they worked for me, I'd fire them."

I dunno, if you went out and grabbed 100 people off the street who DID have jobs, d'ya think your lineup would look like the cast of "Dancing With the Stars"? So you see somebody in that lineup with scraggly hair and beard and piercings, and "I'd fire them." Might be the best mech in the shop.

Out of any given 100 people, maybe 10 rise to more than the average earnings. Maybe 70 make at least a decent living. 20 more make little, and do the "jobs nobody else wants to do", think trash collector, honey dipper, etc., without which the country can be brought to a near halt, see Italy a little while back. The last 10 may be near unemployable, though many of them still manage to get some work to do.

Some here seem to be so elite that if you are not making as much as they are you are worthless. (This is not aimed at you, Bill, I read your posts.) And if you don't spend 100 hours a week either in your shop or at your job, you're simply a bum.

If you don't spend more than you earn, and you have a decent job, you don't need OT. Stop and smell the roses. Never saw a tombstone that said "I Wish I had Spent More Time at Work."

Cheers,

George

[Joe D Grinder]

Originally Posted by MachinistChest

Bush admin didn`t need a better policy to help manufacturing...unemployment was at 4.6 % there was nothing to fix!

MC

Nice, MC!

I was just remarking to myself how strange it is that a year ago, unemployment was all Bush's fault, but now, according to that other thread, government is powerless to do anything about it. It's all automation and overproduction by too few employees. A lot of talk about chickens and eggs.

"A chicken is merely an egg's way of reproducing itself"....Joe

[jdj]

Originally Posted by MachinistChest

Bush admin didn`t need a better policy to help manufacturing...unemployment was at 4.6 % there was nothing to fix!

MC

What policy? Neither party has had a policy to help US mfg. since god knows when!
The credit that mfg. did as well as it did, goes to manufacturers themselves. The have done pretty well considering that neither party has done much of anything except make it worse for them!

Jeff

[Mud]

Originally Posted by jdj

What policy? Neither party has had a policy to help US mfg. since god knows when!
The credit that mfg. did as well as it did, goes to manufacturers themselves. The have done pretty well considering that neither party has done much of anything except make it worse for them!

Jeff

Excellent argument in favor of the free market and keeping big gov't out of it.

[gmatov]

MC and JoeD don't think that the situation today occurred because of the Bush regime?

Unemployment did not skyrocket the day after Obama got elected. It was rising in the last year of Bush's term, and to expect it to make a U-turn the day of the election is asinine. Banks were going tits up and Bush and Paulssen got 700 BILLION bucks to GIVE, no strings, to whoever they wanted to give it to. Nobody knows where the first 300 BILLION went.

That the National Debt went from about 5 to about 11 TRILLION bucks under Bush is poo-pooed away, yet the increment under Obama blows the lid off the "teapot" makes Reps furious is simply politics. The INTEREST on that debt will be paid to the same rich people who have financed all of our debt, EXCEPT for the SS Trust Fund. THAT is by law required to be US bonds at 3%. NOT 10% if interest rates go that high, and they have.

I would venture that the Reps of the country are doing all they can to PROLONG the "depression" till the Midterm election. If things do not improve, the Reps can bleat that, "See, we weren't so bad."

For an ENTIRE Republican minority to swear that they will NOT vote for ANYTHING proposed by a DEM is stupidity. TOTALLY Partisan.

We are not in trouble 70-30 in this country. We are ALL, who do not have millions, in trouble. That "poor" Reps will urge killing of ANY Dem plan is going against their own interests. Would be interesting to see how many antis have heath care. How many are "poor". I know OF a bunch, school bus drivers who HAVE to work in their late 60's, early 70's, because they have no pension or medical other than Medicare.

Peons here, and some of you are, I don't care what you call yourselves, "Owners", "Independent Businessmen", "Sole Proprietors", you are part of US business. If you don't bank over a 1/4 mil, to get you to the rank that Obama said he will not raise taxes on, you are not the problem. You pay what has been calculated to be the heart of the country.

Those who make millions, or multiples of 250 are the ones who, I am sorry to say, do NOT pay their share of what it costs to maintain a United States of America.

JoeD, I have no idea how much he makes, nor how much he pays. It is entirely legal, per Judge Learned Hand, to "avoid" taxes, it is illegal to "evade" taxes. ie, to cheat. If you have a profit you don't want to pay taxes, buy a new machine, write it off. "Avoidance". Pay in the future. Totally legal. Work under the table. Totally illegal. Cash only, possibly illegal. But that does not mean that "cash only" vendors cheat. Audit and you are toast.

Cheers,

George

[pbungum]

FF to 5 years ago, they are making about 42 thou straight time, 60 or so with all the OT they can beg, and the Co is always trying to cut that out, and a teacher of their age with their seniority would be making between 60 and 70, in my SD, and they are in Allegheny Co.,think Pittsburgh, PA, so they would be in the 70 to 80 thou for a little over 9 months in the classroom. "Ah, if only I'd known."

Whoa - teachers make WAY more there than they do here it seems. I thought median teacher pay for the U.S. was ~45k. I made a little over 30k as a community college teacher, teaching at 3 different schools, driving 180 miles a day (adjunct). As a faculty member at one of the universities, I again made a round 30k, and my boss made ~65k (a tenured prof). Most jobs in my original field didn't pay nearly as well as my current work without a Ph.D (I only have a M.S.).

[Blue Steel]

If you haven't been banned for this then you should be. Who cares if they like Unions or not in the South, you are being just plain offensive.

Stephen

Stephen

Originally Posted by gmatov

I really doubt that PM is the epitome of how to fix mfg.

I think Bloom can help, BUT....

POLL.

Those in favor of a UNION?

Those who will kill their first born to keep a UNION out of their area of the country?

90% of the South is strictly Anti-Union. LAWS make it so. You guys have such a "work ethic"that Unions aren't necessary. You know, the catfish are bitin', the tobacco or the cotton need hoin', so you don't go to work.

I ain't been down there for near 50 years, so maybe it's different.

You pay bout the same for a Buick than a Michingander does. You pay about the same for a loaf of bread that a Pennsylvanian does. You pay about the same as a New Yorker does for electricity does, and you probably need more for AC than most Northerners do.

You LIKE getting screwed? You STILL in the slave times? You could hire a colored guy to do YOUR job for a hell of a lot less than YOU gotta pay for a "white" guy.

Again, ain't been down there for 40 or so years . Don't wanna come to see any of you. Saw enough of you in the Service. I doubt you have changed.

Cheers,
George

[MetaRinka]

Originally Posted by willbird

I fail to see how one type of employee compensation gets "directly pushed onto the consumer" and another type does not ??

Bill

In every company I've worked at manufacturing labor rates are billed directly against the amount of product produce per unit of time.

engineering, HR, management, accounting are all billed directly to overhead and are considered either fixed or generally only have a weak relation to production. The difference is being salaried and non.

In one company I worked on the shop floor as a welder and machinist and switched to an engineer (I was in school for an engineering degree at the time). Jumping the fence really sorta opened my eyes. suddenly the exact same people treated my time differently. I also got a considerable pay raise and a lot more independence in taking my lunch and when I worked my hours.

I love fabrication and continue to do it as a hobby and when my engineering jobs calls for it. But even if I could make more money back in straight labor instead of salaried I don't think I would make the switch.

[jdj]

Originally Posted by Mud

Excellent argument in favor of the free market and keeping big gov't out of it.

I did make a mistake there. The Bush admin.(and others) DID have a US mfg. policy. It can be summed up as "short term gains for outsourcing, we will give you that, but that is all". You missed the point of US mfg. doing very well CONSIDERING the fact that trade policies have made things worse. It is something like saying that someone who has been hit by a truck at high speed and is severely injured is doing well by simply being alive CONSIDERING, that they were hit by a truck! Overall, US mfg. SHOULD be doing much better! I guess that the government should just continue making things harder instead of changing trade policies to HELP, US mfg. Free markets? Yes! But not as free as the deregulation that caused the wall street collapse that caused the 10 percent unemployment we have.

Jeff

[jdj]

Originally Posted by MachinistChest

Bush admin didn`t need a better policy to help manufacturing...unemployment was at 4.6 % there was nothing to fix!

MC

The revisionist history starts already. The end of the Bush admin.? A little bit higher than 4.6%.

Jeff

[Joe D Grinder]

Originally Posted by jdj

The revisionist history starts already. The end of the Bush admin.? A little bit higher than 4.6%.

Jeff

Nope, but that's about right for the time just before the democrats took over congress.....Joe

[jdj]

Joe D... Yeah, right. It is all the dems fault.(sarcasm)
I had mentioned earlier that NEITHER party has had a POSITIVE U.S. mfg. policy since god knows when. You don't agree with this?

Jeff

[gmatov]

Stephen,

Oh, knock it off. You've been here over the last month. Dig up old bones?

Do they HAVE UNIONS in Australia? If not, you don't have a leg to stand on when you make such remarks. If they do, you are obviously anti. Well of course. YOU are a go it aloner.

"I don't need no stinking help from anybody." I've read a bit of your history. If you didn't own a "station", you were dirt, hell, less than dirt. Near slaves. Transports, what would you expect? We declared War upon the Mother Land, they needed another dumping place, and Australia was ideal.

Great population and crime control in one.

Now if you want to join the discussion at hand, whether the de/recession is Bush or Obama caused, make your point. If you want to make like a little girl, "EEK, I'm offended!", get in line, or "qeue".

JoeD,

About 9 TRILLION National Debt about the time you mention. Did YOU squeal about GW running up the Debt, or did YOU wait till a Dem came in and go all ga-ga?

100% of the Reps in BOTH houses swear they will NOT vote for ANYTHING that Obama or the Dems propose. Former Dem. Sen Lieberman says HE will vote down Obamacare.

That IS obstructionist. There can be NO "bipartisanship" and I wish the Dems and Obama would realize that.

Cloture and reconciliation are called for. Straight up or down. Vote it down, face the electorate come next November.

Bipartisanship has been called, by Newt Gingrich, "date rape". 50 + 1 is the law of the land. Use it.

Cheers,

George

[Blue Steel]

No George I felt that there are plenty of good people in the South who don't deserve your vitriol. We have unions in Australia, have been a member at different times never liked it that much. In fact in our history there were times the Unions were a dominant force in Government.

For all the faults Australia has, and there are many, I at least try to be civil about things.

Stephen

[Joe D Grinder]

Originally Posted by jdj

Joe D... Yeah, right. It is all the dems fault.(sarcasm)
I had mentioned earlier that NEITHER party has had a POSITIVE U.S. mfg. policy since god knows when. You don't agree with this?

Jeff

OK, I'll bite. Since the government (left OR right) knows nothing about manufacturing, where would such a policy come from, and what would it be? The only thing I can think of that government ever did which was a radical benifit to manufacturing was to enter WW2.

If EITHER side were to pledge to jump off of the MMGW band wagon and scrap cap'ntrade legislation, THAT would be usefull to manufacturing, and tax breaks that this administration pledged but then abandoned for those who hired new workers could make a difference.

Dropping the idea of fines for employers who don't provide worker's health care would make the idea of opening a factory somewhat rosier, too.

Any time you radically accelerate the growth of government you slow or stop the growth of business, manufacturing included. This is no big secret. The path we are on will keep us with high unemployment for the forseeable future, and that's no accident. Prosperity is the enemy of big government, and must be smothered at all costs if the left's dreams are to come true.

Manufacturing does not require a "policy" from government, except indifference. pretty much any policy government comew up with turns, soon enough, to emnity of one form or another.....Joe