Worker Rights are Shaping up a Key Issue in 2020. Who Has the Best Ideas?
We should, of course, avoid simplistic nostalgia for industrial work, nor should we forget its dangers and adverse health effects. Yet workers are right to remember and value many aspects of industrial employment.
Back in September, the International Association of Machinists and United Steelworkers ended their labor-management partnership with Harley-Davidson over the company’s plan to build a plant in Thailand. The partnership agreement, two decades old and praised as a model by some, is the latest iteration of the ‘jointness’ trend first pioneered by UAW and General Motors in the 1980s.
PM Narendra Modi wants to boost manufacturing in his country, but it's cheaper and easier to import than make in India.
Manufacturing jobs are not what they used to be. Companies increasingly hire temp workers through contractors who are paid less and even wear different shirts. Employees paint a grim picture of the work and the long-term impact on the local economy.
With 51 percent of the 24,000 or so local machinists who voted saying yes to the pact, Boeing's " 'best and final' offer [now] guarantees assembly of the next 777 widebody jet and the fabrication of the plane's carbon-fiber wing" will be done at plants in the Puget Sound region.
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