In a recent article by Maurice Taylor, CEO of tire manufacture Titan,
replied "How stupid do you think we are ... Titan is going to buy a
Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and
ship all the tires France needs, You can keep the so-called workers." When
asked if he was interested in purchasing a Goodyear tire factory that was going
to close and put 1,000 workers out of work in Amiens, France. This trend of
manufacturing jobs going overseas to countries like China and India is a
problem not just in France, but in most of the developed countries of the
world.
More and more businesses send their manufacturing away because the costs
to keep a domestic plant are too expensive, with high employee wages and
government restrictions. While the manufacturing jobs going overseas means the
customer has to pay less for what they want; it means the customer is out of a
job. Much of middle class America was founded in blue collar jobs—jobs that are
disappearing. Today it seems that the middle-class workforce of America is
white collar. The problem is—or rather the question—are there enough white
collar jobs to sustain the American middle-class population? Looking to
America's neighbors in Europe, the answer appears to be NO. Since the
industrial revolution employment and prosperity of a nation has rested in the
manufacturing sector, and while we believe we've moved onto the next revolution
with the internet, that fact hasn't changed.
The European Union's unemployment
rate is 11%, France's is over 10%, Italy 11%, German 5.5%, United Kingdom 7.7%,
Spain 26.2%. The United States is 7.8% as of now. As for the countries that
these manufacturing jobs are going to: China 4.1%, India 3.8%, and Vietnam
2.9%. As demand for companies to have workers in the United States and Europe
decreasing it appears the governments need to find a new way to market their workforce
to a company.
Do you believe that a country’s prosperity is tied directly to its
manufacturing industry? Why/Why not? How can countries like Spain and France
re-market their workforce to attract business back to their country?
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/us-ceo-france-you-can-keep-your-so-called-workers-1C8448612
