WV wood products company to cut wages to entice workers....

[CrownPrinceBandar]

Columbia Flooring, a subsidiary of the Portland, OR-based Columbia Wood Products has decided that a wage cut would be an inducement for the good workers to step-up and compete for fewer high-paying jobs, all the while immigrant labor is brought in (supplied by a local immigrant labor headhunting firm) "to do the jobs Americans won't do".

http://www.wvpubcast.org/tv/outlook/wood-labor0824.pdf

The executive director of the West Virginia Forestry Association says many sawmills are looking to foreign workers to fill entry-level positions. They’re the hardest and lowest-paying jobs in the industry.
Dick Waybright: “I’ve heard it said that, well maybe we need to start looking to Mexicans to fill the labor supply, and what we see as one of the problems, is first of all it’s hard work. It requires stamina to get out there and work. You’re lifting, you’re pulling, you’re shoving. All these different things. Plus, summertime it’s hot and in the wintertime it’s cold.”

However, the executive director of the Affiliated Construction Trades Foundation, Steve White, disagrees:

"What they forget to add to that statement is yeah, West Virginians don’t want minimum wage jobs that should pay a living wage. And so, these corporations are so happy to be able find workers who work for $6 dollars an hour, below the poverty level, when the standard has always been twice that or more than that where people can raise a family.
And to say that West Virginians can’t or won’t do these jobs is outrageous. It’s not true.”

CWP plan in particular is to reward long-term workers with higher wages. But to do so, it is restructuring its payscale in such a way that current workers are not only feeling the pinch, but they are also worried about future employment security:

At Columbia Flooring, Shoemaker says the starting pay is $8.50 an hour. But that’s about to change. He says the company is restructuring its pay scale to retain more employees.
Others call it a pay cut.
Some of Columbia’s longest-serving employees told us off camera they will soon have their wages cut as part of the pay restructuring plan. One employee who’s been at Columbia since it open agreed to speak to us as long as we only used his voice, and didn’t use his name. “I’ve worked hard to get where I’m at. Now, they want to cut my pay $3 dollars and 20 some cents an hour, from $13.26 I make now to $10.06 or something like that. “We’re all afraid we’re being pushed out the door. Probably in a year or so, there will probably be all Hispanics working up here. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Please don't mistake this as a screed against immigrant labor. I realize everyone has to work, and the notion of a better life is the foundation this country has been built upon. However, the notion of cutting wages to draw in workers that will remain with a company, while employing unskilled immigrants who push the wages down and the hours worked per week up, seems so ludicrous that it boggles my imagination.

[hobbit709]

1. How much of a pay cut

are the geniuses that came up with this taking?

[don954]

2. $6 an hour for dangerous work?

that is flat out exploitation. My local McDonald's pays $7.50/hr staff 9.50/management according to their help wanted sign! I got more on my 1st job, being an entry level telemarketer, 12$ an hour!

[mike_c]

3. this story illustrates the REAL issue in the immigration debate....

Corporate greed. Plain and simple. It's not about immigrants, it's not about who is desperate enough to work for less, and it's not about Americans wanting or not wanting jobs. It's about profit and greed, the old fashioned unvarnished kind. It's time for the labor movement to unite and ORGANIZE again-- every job in America should pay a living wage, and employers who can't or won't afford their workers the dignity of a living wage should be driven from business.

[Deja Q]

6. No argument from me here.

Competition isn't a bad thing, but look where it's getting people.

Not just people either, corporations. Especially with patents -- which has become a "business" of its own. It's depraved.

At some point you've got to work together... or it all falls down.

[ananda]

4. Now, how nasty is that..

.. on the scale of nastiness that everyone in this corporofascist world is capable of.

The war on poverty has definitely turned into war on the poor and working classes.

Sue

[Sinti]

5. This business and every one like it should be shut down.

Pay cuts when the cost of goods is increasing, it's criminal behavior. It's called "restructuring its pay scale to retain more employees" - they must have been watching * closely, Clear Skies, Healthy Forests...

I'm telling you, they're pushing it way too far. Divine retribution can't be far behind. Makes me feel a bit like Samuel L. Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction.

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyrannies of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness for he is truly his brothers keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I shall strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!"
:mad:

[Deja Q]

7. I hope the good ones, who get beaten out by the mouthy ones, do leave

The company deserves no less than to pay do-nothing, conniving twerps high wages for little return.

[kilgore65]

17. Is that from the Bible? I can't seem to find a citation in KJV.

[Sinti]

19. It's supposed to be. In Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson's character

always says this phrase before unloading his hand-cannon into the offending individual. It is supposed to originate from Ezekiel 25:17, but it's really roughly paraphrasing. It's more of a "great movie quotes" thing than a biblical thing. :)

Ezekiel 25 here:
http://www.godrules.net/library/kjv/kjveze25.htm

[kilgore65]

21. he he awesome verse...

I'm going to print a couple of copies of Jackson's version out and mail/windshield them to my neighbors that keep pissing me off

[Cassandra]

8. "summertime it’s hot and in the wintertime it’s cold."

Getting darker at night and lighter towards morning. Duuuuhhhhhhh! Amwericans suddenly can't deal with temperature change? Who do they expect to buy their fucking products?

[hfojvt]

15. Maybe the $5,000 an hour CEOs

going from their temperature controlled cars to their temperature controlled offices will.

[Howardx]

9. BOC!

n/t

[Strelnikov_]

23. "On Your Feet, Or On Your Knees" n/t

[Hubert Flottz]

10. Welcome To The New World Order!

Globalists want Americans to earn what people in Communist China earn. Then the jobs will all come back. Until then they will import every worker they can. They want to destroy the unions world wide too.

[Sherman A1]

11. And the executives will have a similar program designed for them?

One suspects..... NOT.

[joneschick]

12. now we know what NOT to buy. eom

[Elwood P Dowd]

13. This is now common

Here in the south, companies involved in roofing, construction, paving, and landscaping have reduced wages for unskilled workers. Younger males, the majority African-American, could make 6-8 bucks an hour back in the 90's. Now it's almost all immigrants making 5-6 bucks an hour - slightly more in the larger urban areas. When you factor in REAL INFLATION, that's about equal to 3-4 bucks an hour in the 90's. Also, local high school and college students were often employed in these jobs during the peak summer months. You don't see that anymore. What you do see is these contractors living in new 800K homes and driving around with a black "W" sticker on their expensive new SUV.

[AzDar]

14. Nauseating..... n/t

[kilgore65]

16. God, what sick fu*kers...

I swear, it doesn't make any sense to fool with corporate america any more - I mean what's the point? After I got laid off from a well paying job, I started painting houses for a living... no boss no worries. No way I'd go back to working in some 'organization' in today's merciless economic climate...

[earth mom]

18. And people around here argue that illegal immigration does NOT

hurt American workers and cut their wages?! :wtf:

Well, here's your proof! And it is sickening! :puke:

But oh yeah, those who defend illegal immigration won't post on this thread and say they were wrong now will they?! :grr:

[Elwood P Dowd]

20. Supply and Demand

As long as there is a huge supply of people willing to work for peanuts, the wages will always be lower. Eliminate that endless supply of people willing to work for peanuts (12 million illegal immigrants), and wages will go up as the demand for workers increases dramatically. A roofing contractor I know would probably go back to making a paltry 100K a year, but the majority of his workers would most likely be US citizens making a living wage (it was like that in the 90's).

[conflictgirl]

22. The real truth behind "the jobs that Americans won't do"

I've always thought that whole argument about jobs Americans won't do was bullshit in the first place. Now we have further proof that what it really means is "jobs that people who don't want to live with 10 other people can afford to take." Americans will do just about any job - but fact of the matter is that most of us, especially with families to support or in high cost-of-living areas, can't afford to work for $6-8 an hour.

BushCo wants us all to live like the illegal immigrants, unless we're wealthy enough to matter in their messed-up vision of society.

[cap]

24. west va is not a hot bed of high paid labor...

it is one of the poorest states. One of those jobs is preferable to going into the mines. These people are so full of it.

BTW, about Hispanic labor... what about upping THEIR wages as well. What they want are illegals... not Hispanic citizens .

[Strelnikov_]

25. A Story About Some Of Those Jobs We Won't Do

A story of how uncontrolled immigrant labor fills a void that it perpetuates, low wages that make the jobs undesirable due to an oversupply of labor, the classic supply/demand relationship. A story of how the current immigration policy creates a black market for labor, exploiting those who are here illegally, and driving down the wages and working conditions so for legal residents and immigrants the job is a step backward.

Meatpacking jobs (in the midwest) paid a middle class wage ($20/hr) in the 70's. These jobs provided good health care and retirement benefits because they were unionized. As was related by a worker from this era, the social contract was that it was hard, dangerous work that left most workers crippled when they retired, and the compensation reflected this.

Over the 70's and 80's non-union plants were opened, and the unionized plants closed or the unions busted. As compensation was much lower at the non-union plants, U.S. citizens abandoned the industry, and the labor void was filled with immigrant's. Since the supply of this labor is virtually unlimited, compensation and workplace safety has plummeted.

The 70's era worker, in the interview I heard, indicated that there would be no problem attracting U.S. citizens to the industry if compensation and workplace conditions were similar to the 70's.

Here is an excerpt from a study that describes the change in the meatpacking industry in Storm Lake, Iowa:

Meatpacking And The Migration Of Refugee And Immigrant Labor To Storm Lake, Iowa
http://migration.ucdavis.edu/cf/comments.php?id=154_0_2_0

The Hygrade workforce was primarily male and of European descent. Only in its last few years of operation, in the late l970s to early 1980s, did a few women work on the plant floor. The plant’s workforce was from Storm Lake and surrounding communities. Prior to the mid-1980s, Storm Lake was almost exclusively Anglo, and this homogeneity was reflected in Hygrade’s workforce. Many of Hygrade’s workers put in thirty years or more at the plant, reflecting a low turnover. For many, their jobs supported a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle. Average annual incomes were about $30,000, but some senior workers earned up to $40,000 or more in Hygrade’s last year of operation.

In October 1981, Hygrade closed its plant and Storm Lake lost five hundred jobs. Community leaders immediately set about attracting a new buyer for the plant.

In April 1982 IBP announced its purchase of the plant for $2.5 million. After extensive renovation, this became the company's first pork-packing facility (IBP previously had processed only beef.) IBP’s move into pork processing signaled a major transformation of the industry.

When IBP opened its doors in September 1982, its workforce did not resemble the old Hygrade crew. Hundreds of former Hygrade workers applied, but fewer than thirty were hired. IBP would look beyond the Storm Lake community for its laborers. Beginning wages were only $6 an hour, and health benefits become available only after six months on the job. (Today, starting wages are $7 an hour.) The new plant had higher productivity expectations than the old plant. Injury rates climbed, and high employee turnover increased the strain on local labor supplies.

[sandnsea]

26. Everyone deserves a living wage

Not only are they going to pay them crappy wages, but when they need assistance to survive, JUST LIKE CITIZENS WOULD, they'll also attack them for sucking up tax dollars.

This is NOT an immigration problem, it's a LABOR PROBLEM. Unite and fight or let them divide and conquer. That's all there is to it.

[B Calm]

27. Cheap labor conservatism at it's best!