It should now be called cheap, slave Labor Day

Mattel toy factory in China

As the U.S. unemployment rate continues to rise, and bankruptcies and foreclosures follow, we are told that all of these maladies can be blamed upon the current recession. However, the seeds of the current and as yet, unfolding disaster started several years ago, when both our federal government and business community betrayed American working class families.

With so many American companies now firing their American workers and opening factories in China and Mexico, manufacturing jobs have become few and far between. We constantly hear that this nation's economy is becoming service-based. However, with about a million illegal aliens streaming across the border every year who are willing to work for sub-standard wages, even the service jobs will soon become unavailable to Americans. If current corporate trends continue, labor will become a thing of the past for most Americans as poverty becomes their future.

The United States is manufacturing less and less every year and importing more and more. Big American retailers such as Wal-Mart import nearly all of their merchandise from China. Wal-Mart offers prices to their customers on products which if made in the U.S., would be less than the production costs. Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer and as such, now dictates policy to their suppliers. Since Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton died in 1992, the company has been suggesting to their suppliers that they re-locate their factories to China. Wal-Mart sets a price which can only be met with slave labor.

American companies such as RCA and Black and Decker maintain factories throughout Asia to take advantage of the incredibly cheap labor, which can only be offered by countries without reasonable labor laws. Because an item bears the name of an American company, many Americans believe that they are getting a great price on an American product. Unfortunately, the only Americans now employed by most of these companies are a handful of executives, as the actual factory workers live in foreign lands and work for pennies.

While everyone likes low prices, we will all pay a very high price one day for the few dollars saved today at our local Wal-Mart. All of our relatively high-paying factory jobs are being replaced with very low-paying retail jobs. The end result will be the end of the American Dream for working-class Americans.

The University of California at Santa Cruz conducted a study of U.S. job losses between 1979-1999. The study focused on manufacturing jobs in the clothing, footwear, leather, and textile industries. The study concluded that within a three year period, one-third of laid-off workers failed to find other employment, as for the workers who found another job, half of them took a 15 percent cut in wages.
 
In 2007, the overall U.S. trade deficit was $731.2. In 2004, the figure was $668.1 billion. That is an incredible 17 percent increase in over a three-year period. Our trade deficit with China alone in 2007 was $258 million, in 2008, that number increased slightly to $268 million. While the overall trade deficit dipped to $673.3 billion in 2008, that could be attributed to the recession and Americans’ fast-shrinking bank accounts

Every year since 1985, our trade imbalance with China has risen.. As a result, he United States has become a dumping ground for cheap Asian-made products.

However, counter top appliances and underwear are not the only items that Americans will no longer be manufacturing. In 2006, Ford Automotive Corp. announced that it would close seven plants across the country by 2008. Ford plans to lay-off 34,000 workers by 2012.

Shortly after the devastating announcement was made, The Detroit Free Press discovered documents which detailed Ford's plans to invest $9.2 billion in Mexico, which includes a new 280,000 square foot assembly plant. Ford already produces a large portion of their vehicles in Mexico and with their plans to expand existing plants and using local suppliers, Ford will create another 37,420 jobs in Mexico.

Ford is not only replacing all of their laid-off American workers with Mexicans, they are adding another 3,420 employees south of the border!

Since NAFTA began in 1994, millions of U.S. jobs have been lost thanks to the basically free access given to products manufactured in Mexico. The dirt cheap labor which can be found in Mexico has led dozens of companies to close their American factories, only to re-open in Mexico where the average daily wage is US$4.85.

In 2007, the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition reported that 1,001,100 U.S. apparel and textile manufacturing jobs had been lost since 1994. That represents a 52 percent loss of jobs in the textile industry, and a 75 percent job loss in the apparel industry.

AMTAC executive director Auggie Tantillo said: "The loss of one million jobs is an outrage. It drives home the point that the current U.S. trade policy has failed and must be changed now. An uncontrolled flood of imports, often heavily subsidized, is crippling the U.S. textile industry."

The exodus of manufacturing jobs overseas, along with the influx of cheap albeit illegal Mexican labor, combined with the current deep recession have taken a devastating toll on American workers. If Americans are not willing to work for slave wages and adopt a Third World lifestyle...We will simply be out of luck.

The aforementioned facts and figures beg the question: In this so-called Global Economy...Where exactly do American workers fit in?