So, here’s an interesting one…
On Friday, Sean Hannity posts a video of Barack Obama “Mocking Trump for Suggesting he can bring back Carrier jobs”
So here’s the full transcript:
The President’s full response:
www.pbs.org/...
GWEN IFILL: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. Kercher.
As you may have been — may have noticed, while in this election, Donald Trump came to Indiana and talked a lot about what happened with the Carrier Corporation and shipping the jobs out of state. Here’s someone who worked for Carrier and he has a question for you.
ERIC COTTONHAM, Carrier Employee: How are you doing, Mr. President?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: How are you?
ERIC COTTONHAM: My name is Eric Cottonham and I’m representing the Steelworkers Union, Local 1999. And I’m trying to find out, what do we have left far us — all of our jobs are leaving Indianapolis. I see here you’re doing a lot of things, but in Indianapolis, there’s nothing there for us. I mean, what’s next? I mean, what can we look forward to in the future as far as jobs, employment, whatever? Because all of our jobs has left or in the process of leaving, sir.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Well, in fact, we’ve seen more manufacturing jobs created since I’ve been president than anytime since the 1990s. That’s a fact. And you know, if you look at just the auto industry as an example, they’ve had record sales and they’ve hired back more people over the last five years than they have for a very long, long time.
We actually make more stuff, have a bigger manufacturing base today than we’ve had in most of our history. The problems have been — part of the problems have had to do with jobs going overseas and this is one of the reasons why I’ve been trying to negotiate trade deals to raise wages and environmental standards in other countries, so that they’re not undercutting us.
But frankly, part of it has had to do with automation. You go into an auto factory today that used to have 10,000 people and now they’ve got 1,000 people making the same number of cars or more. And — so what that means is even though we’re making the same amount of stuff in our manufacturing sector, we’re employing fewer people.
Now, the good news is that there are entire new industries that are starting to pop up and you’re actually seeing some manufacturers coming back to the United States because they’re starting to realize, “You know what? Energy prices are lower here, workers are better here, this is our biggest market. And so even though we off-shored and went someplace else before, now it turns out we’re better off going ahead and manufacturing here.”
But for those folks who have lost their job right now because a plant went down the Mexico, that isn’t going to make you feel better. And so what we have to do is to make sure that folks are trained for the jobs that are coming in now because some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back, and when somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do?
There’s — there’s no answer to it. He just says, “Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.” Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.
So what I’ve tried to do, what my administration’s tried to do is let’s grow those manufacturing sectors, like clean energy, like some of these new technologies that are coming up, let’s focus on those. We’ve set up, for example, manufacturing hubs where we work with universities, local businesses, local governments, to create research labs that can take something like 3-D printing or, you know, nanotechnology — all kinds of stuff that I can’t really explain because, you know, scientists and really smart people know all about it — and said let’s invest in this so that when the new jobs come, they’re coming here.
But I’ve got to tell you that the days when you just being able to — you just being willing to work hard and you can now walk into a plant and suddenly there’s going to be a job for you for 30 years or 40 years, that’s just not going to be there for our kids because more and more, that stuff’s going to be automated. And if you go into a factory, that kid’s going to need to know computers or is going to need to know some science and some math because they’re not even going to be picking anything up, they’re just going to be working on a keyboard.
And that’s why we put so much emphasis on job training, community colleges, that’s why I’ve proposed making the first two years of community college free so that we know that every young person, they’re going to be able to — if they’re not going for a full four-year degree, at least they’re going to be getting the technical training they need for those jobs in the future.
But you cannot look backwards, and that doesn’t make folks feel good sometimes, especially if it’s a town that was reliant on a couple of big manufacturers. But they’re going to have to retrain for the jobs of the future, not the jobs of the past.
This is interesting, I mean, Donald Trump or Mike Pence, ok well actually Indiana Economic Development Corp, well ok, The State of Indiana supposedly saved “All those Jobs”
It’s interesting though. Eric Cottonham was representing the United Steel Workers local 1999, but in this Town Hall with the President, and in Congress last July while lobbying for the “Bring Jobs Home Act”
uswlocal1999.org
United Steelworkers Local 1999 is an amalgamated local located in Indianapolis, Indiana representing the hourly workforce at Rexnord, Indiana Box, UTC Carrier, RSR Quemetco, Sumco, Diamond Chain, Quaker (Pepsico), Colors, Air System Components, Vertellus, Kinder Morgan, and Cenveo.
And what’s this “Bring Jobs Home Act”?
en.wikipedia.org/...
Senator Stabenow said that "we've got to make sure the tax code reflects the right values and policies."[2]
Senator Walsh is considered "one of the most vulnerable incumbents in this election cycle."[2] Walsh has alleged that his opponent was involved in outsourcing. According to Walsh, "it is outrageous that Americans are forced to subsidize corporate decisions to ship jobs overseas."[2]
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) said that the bill "would end senseless tax breaks for outsourcers" and "would end the absurd practice of American taxpayers bankrolling the outsourcing of their very own jobs."[2]
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) accused the Democrats of only being interested in politics and not in actually encouraging companies to stay in the United States.[2] McConnell pointed to reducing corporate tax rates as a step that would keep businesses in the United States that the Democrats have been unwilling to take. According to McConnell, the bill is "designed for campaign rhetoric and failure - not to create jobs here in the U.S."[2]
Turns out it’s a Democratic Party plot to.. I don’t know.. Bring Jobs Home? I mean, back in July of 2014 Mitch McConnell had nothing good to say about such things. July.. 2014.
thehill.com/…
Donald Trump, in his boldest tweet yet, bold because he had to type six (6) tweets to get it done, and had to type dots at the end of each like.. ….. so that we the anxious twitter followers would know that there is more tweets, tweets:
That’s six tweets!!! But now there will be a 35% tax, it seems. I do wonder what Mitch McConnell might say about this. I wonder if Donald Trump is “Only interested in politics and not in actually encouraging companies to stay in the United States.”
Color me skeptical, so I tried to find out what kind of plant that Carrier and friends are opening in Mexico.. Didn’t find much, but did happen upon this from February 2016
www.industryweek.com/…
United Technologies, the parent company of both plants, is 83% owned by institutional investors and mutual funds. And who owns these mutual funds you might ask? Well it is us, and I don't mean that in the abstract. The Indiana Public Retirement System, including the Indiana Teachers Retirement Fund, TIAA-CREF (the leading retirement fund to almost all colleges and universities in the state) and even the United Steel Workers retirement plan invests in United Technologies. My guess is that half of working Hoosier households in Indiana own a part of these companies. We are all capitalists now, and that ought to make us a bit more thoughtful about our policies towards business.
The now closing plants made HVAC systems. The biggest demand for these involves new home construction, which has been dormant for a decade. The workers who make these products reportedly earn $20 to $24 an hour. Health care benefits are surely more than $7 an hour, and other costs at least $4 an hour. The company claims it is relocating to Mexico, where workers will earn perhaps $3 an hour. The American workers would have to be about 10 times as productive as the Mexicans to justify this wage differential.
The unfeeling laws of economics might demand this move, but I am skeptical this company is actually moving to Mexico. I think this claim is made simply to allow their workers additional benefits under the Trade Adjustment Assistance rules. I suspect that most of these jobs will be swallowed by automation, not Mexicans. That leads us to the role of government.
These plants are reported to have received millions of dollars of federal, state and local assistance. This means that through government largesse profitable companies and working households subsidized a company whose business plans couldn't ultimately include staying in the US. In hindsight, maybe that wasn't a good investment. Perhaps it would be wiser for government to invest in making people more productive.
We do want workers to earn $24 an hour, with health benefits and retirement and vacation. But to do so they have to produce $24 an hour in goods, plus the cost of health care and retirement and vacation. They also have to help earn a profit for their company (6.1% last quarter for UT). Otherwise those troublesome owners will force them to become more profitable, either through automation or moving where labor is cheaper.
My suspicion and hope is that most of these workers will quickly find new jobs. After all, good manufacturing workers are not a commodity. Still, the lesson is clear; directly subsidizing businesses is a seductive, politically popular but perilously ineffective method of keeping jobs in the U.S.
And so, the S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶I̶n̶d̶i̶a̶n̶a̶'̶s̶ Donald Trump’s answer to a seemingly failed policy of subsidizing jobs, is to.. Subsidized jobs. Time will tell if this new found money will be used to automate parts of the plant to minimize labor costs.
So while I’m looking around at all this. I notice one of Donald Trump’s.. uh.. yeah.. Tweets..
Who is Rexnord, and where did I see that before.
Well, it’s part of United Steel Workers 1999’s membership.
www.rexnord.com
socialistworker.org/…
Pence has been just as determined to do the dirty work of the corporate world, which has led unions to criticize the now-presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee for undermining the economic well-being of Indiana residents.
Among those unions is United Steelworkers Local 1999, which represents workers at a Carrier air conditioning factory in Indianapolis that management announced earlier this year would close. On the campaign trail for the Republican nomination, Trump criticized the layoffs at Carrier, which wants to move the Indiana jobs overseas.
But the Steelworkers point out that Trump's selection of Pence exposes his supposed concern for working people. "If you want to take credit for all those jobs coming to Indiana, and we're losing jobs due to corporate greed--I've got issues with that," Local 1999 President Chuck Jones told an Indianapolis television station.
So, that’s nothing to do with Air Conditioning.. Could be a highly coincidental move by another Indiana company to threaten moving jobs to Mexico in order to get ready access to the S̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶I̶n̶d̶i̶a̶n̶a̶'̶s̶ Donald Trump’s government subsidies. Seems everything to do with punishing USW 1999.
Seems something of a #Carriergate started friday.
