In 1974, the Japanese only had about 6.7% of the
American auto market. In 1982 foreign car sales shot up to an amazing
27.8%. Some members of our government conveniently ignore the fact
that 31 other consuming nations take major steps to keep the Japanese
from flooding their markets.
The U.S. domestic bill (S.707) was designated to
keep our U.S. based corporations from shipping our jobs overseas and
to give incentives, in our country, to huge multinationals to build
here. Why is it so wrong for manufactures that sell vehicles to
Americans to use American workers to build a certain percentages of
each vehicle?
The big three are expected to import literally
hundreds of thousands of vehicles from South Korea, Mexico and Japan.
They are also importing millions of major and minor components such
as engines, transmissions, switches and wiring harnesses and with
each shipment our country loses.
U.S. automotive unemployment is at 24.6% and the
competition between the US worker and many of the foreign workers is
not equal. The multinationals are exploiting many of their foreign
workers with shamefully low wages and then using these workers as
unfair competitive examples of how we are overpaid. The Brazilian
hourly wage is about $1.35, South Korea $1.10, Taiwan $1.37 and the
Mexican autoworker makes about $2.50 per hour.
Mike Westfall conducting his bi-weekly in-plant
lunch meeting with his people.
The whole equation really boils down to an issue
of power. With more and more wealth and power going to the
multinationals the labor movement, which has taken workers from an
exploited condition and brought then to a decent standard of living,
is being asked to cut its own throat.
Because of the labor movement the past forty
years have been good for working people when compared to any other
time in history. Unions like the U.A.W. have won decent wages for
their members and this has had a positive spin-off effect for other
industries, which raised the standard of living, and quality of life
for our entire country.
Social considerations have rarely entered into
the equation with these multinationals, it is purely economic. In
Mexico the auto companies can save $53.00 per engine, $38.00 per
transmittion $0.56 per wiring harness when compared to U.S. labor.
Many of these developing countries were once
looked at as being second-rate producers of cheap products. Today,
Mexico for example, is working with cheap labor, cheap energy, a
shrinking peso and Japanese and American know how to build a massive
industry with its sight set on U.S. customers.
Mexico is now shipping one million engines a year
to the U.S. and will soon be exporting 200,000 cars a year to us.
General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, just to name a few, are all very
active in Mexico building major vehicles and component plants that
will all displace American jobs. Chrysler now builds many K cars in
Mexico, Ford is working on a major facility for future front wheel
drive vehicles in Mexico. This fall General Motors will be building
their “El Camino” and “Cabellero” in Mexico. Most of these vehicles
will be exported to the U.S. and they are just small examples of what
the American based multinational auto companies are doing on a world
scale.
Every one billion dollars in imported parts
translates into 25,000 fewer American jobs and the annual importation
of Mexican auto parts alone runs at 1.4 billion. Since 1978 our
domestic auto industries pay roll has fallen by 170,000 jobs. Many
argue that without content legislation, imports will reach a
staggering 50% of our market by 1990 and I predict you will see more
foreign car names then American. Content legislation would create or
preserve at least 200,000 auto jobs and 500,000 auto related
jobs.
There are many economic arguments for content
legislation, such as the high cost of social programs, necessary due
to lost jobs, or loss of tax revenue by unemployed workers ($50
billion in 1981& 1982 alone).
Some believe it would be difficult for the
Japanese and other companies to open factories here for a variety of
reasons, but it has been done successfully in the past. In 1981,
Japan alone, had 272 companies operating 428 plants in 43 states
which included 13 in Michigan.
Some argue that content legislation would trigger
retaliation by the Japanese in other trade areas such as trade,
computers, and aircraft, but Japan doesn’t retaliate against France,
which limits the Japanese share to under 3% of their auto market and
they still trade with Australia, which has an 85% content
requirement. Of the 31 countries that do have content rules many have
protection that is written much stronger than that proposed by the
U.S. bill.
Our government needs to give a firm response to
this one-sided trade situation by passing and enforcing a realistic
content bill. Our government has an obligation to the workers and
citizens of this country to protect our basic premier industries,
just like all other responsible nations do.
Walter Mondale said not long ago,” We’ve been
running up the white flag when we should be running up the American
Flag”, “What do we want our kids to do? Sweep up around Japanese
computers and spend a lifetime serving McDonalds hamburgers?”
The only alternative to facing this situation
squarely is to do what many of the multi-nationals want us to do,
which is absolutely nothing. This would give them the exclusive power
to progressively reduce us all country by country to the lowest
common denominator in the name of increased corporate profits.
Mike Westfall
Copyright 2004: " Web Site Creator/Editor : Bernie Lowthian / America's Workers For Historical Accuracy ": October 15, 2004