American Realistan

“There is no real sense of job security,” says Duke University Professor Gary Gereffi. “I think that’s a kind of anxiety we’re unfortunately starting to live with. The longer [a factory has] been in existence, the more vulnerable your job probably is,” Gereffi says.

The working class are called the statistical middle class due to their position on the income spectrum. Economic class models used by researchers like Dennis Gilbert or Thompson and Hickey estimate that roughly 53% of Americans are members of the working or lower classes. The majority of the statistical middle class enjoy relatively low job security, often needing two incomes to meet their needs. This makes such folks vulnerable to Middle class squeeze due to downsizing, competition from lower-paid foreign workers and contractors, and the elimination of unions. Does this sound like your situation? Not sure? Steve Daniels of WTVD, Raleigh NC, offers some important tips that’ll help you recognize if your job could be in jeopardy.

The situation is beginning to be noticed in the Congress, the last place problems seem to attract attention.

“Greed, in my humble opinion, will destroy America,” says Walter Jones, the Republican North Carolina Congressman who’s tired of hearing from his constituents who are losing their jobs, even those making those french fries he renamed freedom fries. At least those fast food jobs aren’t going to end up in Mexico.

In Reynosa, Mexico, there are 200 American factories employing nearly one hundred thousand people - ten Reynosinos for the price of one Tar Heel. Rochelle Richardson is losing her job at the Eaton factory in Johnston County to a factory in Reynosa. She says she understands why her factory is closing. “If I had to make a business decision like that and let 10 people do what one person does, why not?” Rochelle says.

The stock response to this is to return to school and get educated. Computer classes are a very popular course, but as a person who is involved with computers as a profession in the real world for thirty years, I can attest that things aren’t very rosy for us old timers. Dozens of us are Microsoft MCSE’s, yet we keep our current employment because the pay as an MCSE doesn’t match what we make now as industrial controller systems techs.

William Bedford of the Canada Free Press puts it thusly:

History teaches us that progress in the work place, while eliminating thousands of jobs, creates thousands of new ones. And human workers still will be needed to build, program and maintain those millions of robots that are heading our way. The term, artificial intelligence however would be better used to describe the eggheads who believe that they can teach computers to think for themselves.

The fact is, a computer, no matter how amazing it appears to be,
is still only a machine that any fool can render useless
simply by cutting off its power supply.

But that doesn’t stop workers from seeing more education as the way out as this sadder-but-wiser would-be computer programmer can attest. She ran up $22,157 in student loans for a certificate she has not been able to use, discovering that her computer skills weren’t good enough, even after obtaining extra schooling, to get an office job.

We’re going to be joined on the other side of the page break by readers from Blogcritics, so leave room for swelled heads and inflated egos. (more…)

ABC News, for all of its right-wing slant of late, ran a feature last night that reminded me of when investigative journalism was the norm and not the exception. You can see it here. It runs a bit over eight minutes, and I’ll wait here while you go see it.

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