Just when you think it couldn’t get worse for Henry County, Stanley Furniture announces plans to eliminate 500+ jobs.
It all started today as I was getting ready to head to our Reidsville studios when I got a call saying we had “Breaking News in Martinsville”, so I’m needed in our Martinsville studios. Our sources had already told us what was going to happen so we were just waiting for the official announcement. By now, you probably know what happened. Today was another tough day in the media business…
- Star News’ Bob Sharp was outside the Stanley Furniture plant in the Stanleytown area. The employees were in a meeting with the CEO of the company and were getting the bad news. Bob interviewed some of the employees as they drove out and I was totally surprised at the employees’ attitudes. There were a few that had tears in their eyes as they contemplated their futures, but the majority of the attitudes were a surreal form of acceptance. We talked about that in the studio.
- Unlike the American of Martinsville plant closing, the management of Stanley Furniture gave the employees over four months notice before their jobs will be lost. I’m guessing that factored in to the “acceptance” attitude.
- Once we got the official word from Stanley Furniture, the enormity of the job losses hit home. Henry County simply can’t take any more job losses of this scale, or any scale for that matter.
- We broadcast over 5 hours of continuous coverage on this and heard from lots of viewers. There was a sense of defeat in almost everybody’s voice whether or not they were personally affected by the Stanley Furniture news.
- As a libertarian at heart, I never want to think that the government is obligated to help in any way… businesses should prosper or fail on their own merits. Today, I have a large exception to that theory. Henry County is dangerously close to falling apart. Local, state and federal government must get involved quickly to attract industries to Henry County, and those industries must locate quickly. They’re out there somewhere and it’s time to devote every resource to reach that goal.
Sometimes, people think that we enjoy reporting stories like this. We don’t. We’re human and we hurt along with everyone else when news like this happens… but it is news, and we’ve got a responsibility to make sure everybody knows all of the facts in stories like this. We did a good job today doing just that.
But that doesn’t make days like this any easier.
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The only responsibility that the Federal or State governments have to any private industry and to the general climate of private business in any town or city in this nation, is not to private business any harm. However, once the Federal government mistakenly joined in hundreds of Foreign Trade Agreements (e.g. NAFTA) it failed in that duty. The mass exodus of manufacturers taking advantage of these agreements and moving their manufacturing hubs to foreign countries at the expense of American jobs has proven that.
The only way that any labor-intensive private industry will ever return to this country is if the Federal government cancels all of those well-intentioned, but misguided, Foreign Trade Agreements and offers incentives (tax breaks) for manufacturers to once-again return manufacturing jobs to these shores.
To be perfectly clear on this subject, no one political party is responsible for manufacturing job losses in America. Both the Democrat and Republican Party politicians, for many, many years, have failed the American people by joining forces to chase jobs from our shores. Canceling all Foreign Trade Agreements will be embarrassing for many politicians but is a necessity if we, as a country, are ever going to wind up on our own economic feet again.
NAFTA only made the CEOs and the federal government rich, the companies makes more monies by sending USA jobs overseas to use cheap labor to make products, bring back the products back to USA without much tariff’s cost, selling goods at a huge makeup.
The R and D made monies off NAFTA in the way of lobbyist.
I know that the GA people, who bought Dan River, tried not to send the jobs overseas but the other Textiles giants were sending their stuff overseas and making huge profits off of poor workers, make sense, only to the CEOs and federal government.
America has lost most of the manufacturing jobs to NAFTA and they only to recover, put huge tariffs from China, Mexico good or even fair tariffs, the CEOs of America may wake up when they cannot make huge profits.
The question is, Do we want cheap stuff made in Bangladesh, thereby giving us fewer American jobs (but cheaper stuff) or do we want more American jobs, but more expensive stuff?
NAFTA and other FTAs killed Martinsville’s manufacturing – so we would gladly take more jobs and pay a little bit more for stuff. People who live in suburban and urban districts, on the other hand, don’t understand that there are people who make the stuff they use, so they just want to get it as cheaply as possible.
Perhaps there are regulations strangling local manufacturers and if some unnecessary regulation was undone, our manufacturing would be in better shape. But I also know, as a history major, that in its infancy, American manufacturing had to be protected by a tariff. (I think it was actually US Grant that explicated this economic theory best, but I don’t know where I would find that quote now.) In any event, manufacturing has to be protected when it can’t compete – and let’s be honest, our manufacturing can’t compete right now. A total free-marketer would say that the market is working out inefficiencies (and it honestly is, Malaysian labor is cheaper than American labor) and that in the long run, we’ll adapt. Here I agree with Keynes (it is Keynes, right?): In the long run, we’re all dead.
Henry County and Martinsville has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. We’ve got to adapt, to be sure; but we’ve also got to have an environment in which we can go through this upheaval and not die. Until we can figure out a way to adapt, we’ve got to have protection.
One of the reasons jobs went over seas is because of Unions. People continued to strike for more and more. Who had to pay for this us, the American people. Yes CEOs are greedy. So are Unions. If we worked for a fair wage so items could be made for a less expensive cost. Look at the car companies. Only the Union companies had trouble. Now if the Unions could go back to actually helping people that would be great. Only the big wheels of the Unions will continue to make money just like the crooked CEOs.