Green Shoots in America’s Ruins

The proposed wage is half of what beginning, unionized employees currently earn. 

Nissan and other automobile manufacturers have taken advantage of near third world labor conditions in the southeast United States. According to BusinessWeek , “Sure, [Nissan’s] plants use cheap- er, nonunion labor. Besides lower wages, the Smyrna [Tennessee] workers get about $3 an hour less in benefits than the Big Three assemblers represented by the United Auto Workers.” The Financial Times reports, “Foreign carmakers have poured billions of dollars of capital into the US southeast over recent years…attracted…by relatively low labor costs, a largely non-unionized workforce, and hefty financial incentives from states desperate to attract fresh investment and jobs.” 

Thus workers in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia are being used for class war against the “pampered” western European auto workers. This is a trend which initially used the low wages of Eastern Europe as weapons. As Kevin Dome reported in the Financial Times (discussing the opening of a new car plant in eastern Germany), “GM has…an enthusiastic and young workforce eager to learn new working methods, but also wage rates are 40 percent of those at its Russelsheim plant near Frankfurt. The gap is supposed to close somewhat in the next few years, but for the moment the [new plant’s] workers receive no extra holiday pay, no 13 months of salary, and they work longer hours than their pampered colleagues in western Germany.” 

Eastern Europe offers “green shoots in communism’s ruins” (see Financial Times , October 20, 1992). The “green shoots” include “rising unemployment and the pauperization of large sections of the industrial working class.” These “green shoots” are still being used for class warfare today. In July workers for DaimlerChrysler relinquished a pay raise after the company threatened to ship 6,000 jobs from western Germany to the east and to South Africa. Volkswagen has threatened to eliminate or shift 30,000 jobs unless its European workers agree to a wage freeze. Now corporations will have another threat in their pockets—green shoots in the southeastern United States. 

It seems the green shoots are spreading throughout the United States. The New York Times recently reported, “The ranks of the poor and those without health insurance grew in 2003 for the third straight year.” The U.S. has been home to rising unemployment and the pauperization of minorities. The Journal reported, “The median net worth of Hispanic households fell in 2002 to $7,932, down 24 percent from 1999…. Over the same period, the net worth of African- Americans fell 32 percent to $5,988 from $8,774. For white households, the measure rose 2.6 percent to $88,651.” 

The green shoots in the United States have clearly benefited. Bonuses on Wall Street reportedly rose this past year. The Journal reported Goldman Sachs’s bonus pool increased 25 percent, Lehman Brothers’ increased 15 percent, and Morgan Stanley’s went up by 15-20 percent. Goldman’s CEO said, “We had a very, very good year.” The business press speaks of the “affluent advantage” where the “economic recovery tilts to highest-income Americans.” Yet most people in the U.S. live within the green shoots, with declining wages, increased debt, social service cutbacks, McJobs, and another four years of the Bush regime.