Way back around the time when the Janesville GM Plant was winding down in its final days, I recall the editors of the Janesville Gazette writing a short series of editorials about the culture of manufacturing jobs and its related union affiliation. They wrote about how the culture of high school educated or less workers earning $50,000+ annual with benefits actually helped keep the Janesville economic and social set down. Not in those exact words, but they weren't very nice about it and in fact implied we'll be better off without manufacturing jobs and the union culture that tends to follow.
Since that time however, quite a few things have changed. Top officials in the local business lobbies were filmed gloating over the suggestion that the area's remaining unemployed will have no choice but to take much less in wages if they expect to land a job because local employers will no longer have to compete with GM wages for skilled labor.
These same groups ironically enough, along with their media enabler Gazette, have since embarked on a publicity campaign to encourage new graduates to consider manufacturing for their career. It's a complete about-face.
In fact, last year the Janesville Gazette published an article about all the glory that awaits job seekers in the manufacturing sector in the state of Wisconsin. The
article titled, "State Manufacturers Have jobs, Need Workers" was written by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, and helped build the mime about Wisconsin's so-called skills gap. The core of the story was that students perception of manufacturing jobs is outdated. That those are the jobs that are indeed in demand.
At the time
I countered that those workers might be in demand by manufacturing employers, but because of the steady beat down of unions, wages and benefits, those jobs are not in demand by students and other able-bodied working age adults.
I'll admit, there's a pretty big reality gap here, but until something changes on the compensation front, students and other working age adults are left with no choice but to pursue higher education if they expect to afford raising a family in the near future.
A recent survey conducted by the area's divide and conquer business group, Rock County 5.0, of Rock County area students confirmed my suspicions and produced an expected result.
JG Excerpt:
-- Of those thinking about technical careers, just 2.1 percent indicated an interest in manufacturing.
Gotta' wonder what did the Rock County 5.0 expect? But they'll say that is precisely the perception they want and need to change.
Except, when you beat down unions and the wages and benefits they represent, you end up with killing off student demand for jobs unions not only covered, but also other staples necessary to bolster a vibrant U.S. economy such as jobs in education and the many skilled trades. The
workers are in demand, but fewer and fewer want those jobs. Because of the beatdown, the leverage is backwards. That is the reality.
This steady beatdown is what most folks who are paying attention call the race to the bottom, and yet nearly everything I've written here is the reality the smiling folks at our local business groups are trying to change.
One last observation for this post is how our single party rule red state government and their media enablers are shifting the pursuit of the American Dream away from an individual's pursuit of happiness to the corporation's pursuit of happiness.
In a Gazette feature presentation about the area's economic future,
Vision 2020, there are multiple passages that allude to that shift in perception and pursuit. One example is this statement from the Gazette about the Director of Southwest Wisconsin Workforce Development on Page 12 ...
Vision 2020 Excerpt:
Borremans is concerned that schools have for too long tried to satisfy students’ passions instead of the local economy’s needs.
Sure, there is some merit to that reasoning. But it’s suddenly no longer about our own individuality, or to control our own destiny or to be the master of our own pursuit of happiness. It’s become about satifying somebody else’s version of happiness – and that version could be society’s, a corporation’s or the state’s plans for our happiness.
That in my opinion is not what America is about ...at all.
