The Good, The Bad, The Overworked

Recently, I have been working all day on random projects at work, and working all night on reviewing documents.  But I am not complaining. I have a job.

This week, I felt like chicken little when I talk about the economy in general or the current state of the job economy. Our clients are laying off. They are moving jobs overseas. They are worsening the panic.

The thing is, why not? Why not save money? Here is my theory on why, and why this will ultimately backfire.

A. The Why

Many things have contributed to the demise of the old way that the economy worked. It's rise began with the labor movement at the turn of the century. People were tired of losing their arms and legs because of faulty factory equipment, only to be turned out into the street because they were now unable to work.  Little children slaved away for nothing, just to be able to eat a crust of bread. The environment was there to destroy. 

Labor unions were a good thing to begin with. They provided worker stability, doing what labor laws are doing in China right now.  Collective bargaining agreements functioned like contracts with employees, protecting them from the whims of employers, protecting them from the old policies that would take an arm or limb and leave them to the poor house. 

But, like everything else, approaches must evolve, but the entrenched it slow to change. Which makes it die. And the old methods and conventions are starting to die.  An example of this is the American auto industry.  Because they were so resistant to change, there might just be one brand left standing by the beginning of the year.  

The response to the development of pressure to "behave" from both employers and the federal government is to go elsewhere, where the pressure doesn't exist.  Many countries, desperate for the influx of money that having a multi-national corporation can bring, eagerly offer themselves as homes to these companies, proud of their lack of regulations.  Then investors, in position of power, encourage trade agreements that allow companies to bring back in their goods.

B. The results and repercussions

The great thing that happened with Ford cars when they invented the assembly line: worker's brought cars.   It really makes sense. If you have these wonderful projects, and you are able to produce them for much cheaper out of the country, the question then becomes who will buy them when they return? If all of your traditional customers are unemployed, because everyone is doing what you are doing, who will buy your product? 

Right now, with the crash on wall street, with the massive layoffs and job exportation, who will buy the products that people abroad make? 

The additional issue is without the environmental concerns and restrictions abroad, will companies in the pursuit of profit be destroying the environment even faster. 

When I was 16, I went to Honduras for a mission trip. Aside from the extreme hypocrisy that this trip revealed, I remember a surreal moment where I watched a man going into a factory wearing a pair of jeans that in a department store would have cost $50 or $60 dollars.  He was walking into a clothing sweat shop that was making Tommy Hillfigure Jeans.