Grow some stones

[spectrumc01]

To all businesses that move overseas...

If you want to move, then move. But don't blame your move on the unions.

You are moving to increase your profit margin, don't apologize and don't make excuses.

Grow some stones and take the hit to your public image as being Un-American, which you are.

Trying to avoid the hit by blaming the unions is an outright lie.

 

[FuelRod]

What about overpriced labor (expense) and profit margin is confusing to you?

 

[spectrumc01]

What about overpriced labor (expense) and profit margin is confusing to you?

It's not confusing. A business wants to maximize it's profit margin, nothing hard to understand there. A worker wants to work and be compensated fairly for his/her effort, nothing hard to understand there. The profit pie is only so big, nothing hard to understand there. So the arguement comes down to percentages, who gets how much, still not hard to understand.

The choice business has made is this... Their percentage is not big enough for them on their side. So they want to take a piece of the workers percentage, thus the disagreement. Still not hard to understand.

Then they move overseas or to where ever, where they can get a bigger piece of the workers percentage. Again not hard to understand.

An American Business that moves overseas because they don't want to pay American workers is an Un-American business. When they blame their move overseas on the American worker because they still want Americans to buy their Un-American product is a lie. Finally not hard to understand.

 

[Mr Natural]

What about overpriced labor (expense) and profit margin is confusing to you?

There's no such thing as overpriced labor.

 

[FiscalSanity]

Spectrum,

As much as i would like to agree with you, i can't on this one. I had to research the whole subject of outsourcing very heavily about 3 years ago for a paper I was planning on writing, and I had to revise a lot of my thinking once I started digging deep enough and comparing the P&L statements of American companies to their overseas competitors. Yes, it is true that SOME companies are moving jobs overseas just to boost their profit margins to higher levels, but there are an awful lot of them that had no choice but to move jobs to cheaper labor countries to stay price competitive on the world market. They either cut labor costs or faced being pushed out of the market all together, which would have cost even more jobs.

Thing is, the only thing that has made this possible was that shipping was so cheap that you could build the product in China, pay to ship it to the US, and still have costs low enough to sell it at a competitive retail price and make a decent profit. As much as i hate paying high prices for gas I also realize that the higher the world price goes the more expensive shipping will be, which will make foreign imports less competitive in the US market.

 

[spectrumc01]

Spectrum,

As much as i would like to agree with you, i can't on this one. I had to research the whole subject of outsourcing very heavily about 3 years ago for a paper I was planning on writing, and I had to revise a lot of my thinking once I started digging deep enough and comparing the P&L statements of American companies to their overseas competitors. Yes, it is true that SOME companies are moving jobs overseas just to boost their profit margins to higher levels, but there are an awful lot of them that had no choice but to move jobs to cheaper labor countries to stay price competitive on the world market. They either cut labor costs or faced being pushed out of the market all together, which would have cost even more jobs.

Thing is, the only thing that has made this possible was that shipping was so cheap that you could build the product in China, pay to ship it to the US, and still have costs low enough to sell it at a competitive retail price and make a decent profit. As much as i hate paying high prices for gas I also realize that the higher the world price goes the more expensive shipping will be, which will make foreign imports less competitive in the US market.

When you were researching did it state that if the management cut their incomes down they would remain competitive? A worker making 50K a year as opposed to management that makes double or better, are those cuts even considered? Just my opinion but if the stockholders and the management took little cuts and the workers also took cuts the company would remain competitive. What seems to be happening is that the workers are the only ones being asked to sacrifice for the company.

 

[FiscalSanity]

Spectrum,

Yes. In a lot of cases the management had taken a haircut on pay, or at least weren't getting raises. I still have a lot of contacts in UPS management, so i can tell you that in the last couple of years virtually no one but union employees has gotten a raise. In fact, they've cut management staff back so far that nobody can really do everything they are supposed to do anymore. That process was already happening when i left the company, and it has just accelerated in the last 3 years.

Something you need to understand when it comes to truly big business. Perception is everything. UPS (or any othe company) cannot afford to lets it's profits dip too far or investors will sell out and the stocks value will plummet. Like every other big publically traded corporation UPS is at the mercy of it's investors to some degree, and as long as they keep demanding x rate of return on their investment the company has to deliver or risk losing a major amount of capital.

 

[sparky]

bottom line aside FS, Spectrum makes an ideogical point of allegiance to corporatism, vs America

they are , imho, far less a symbiant relation than we (the people) are led to believe

 

[FiscalSanity]

Sparky,

I'm in a very odd position, because in most ways I don't fit into either the worker or the owner/executive category. i don't believe that what's good for big business is what's good for America, but i also don't think you can ignore the fact that companies face financial choices that can't always be decided based on nationality. When you're talking about public corporations they have even less leeway, because they have to answer to shareholders that's only concern is making a profit off their investment.

The more I studied this whole issue the more I realized that there just aren't any easy answers. Every move you could take to correct one problem just creates another problem.