[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Please Explain To Me How... (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 9/3/2007 8:53:42 PM EDT
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It is cheaper to buy steel that is made in China and then brought all the way here than it is the make it in the United States. Exactly what the fuck happened to US Steel? I know all about labor unions, but even union wages cannot possibly be offset when one considers how expensive it is to bring something a big and bulky as STEEL in quantity from China to the United States. Even if China gave it to us for FREE, I bet we could make it here cheaper than it costs to bring it from China. This doesn't even take into account the quality of US vs. Chinese steel. And what about German steel? When did Krupp stop making things out of steel and start making coffee grinders? WTF happened? I think we are being sold down the river in the interests of developing a global economy. |
Even if we put quality issues aside. Consider how much steel is needed for just on building in downtown NY. Do you have any idea what it costs to bring that much steel from China to the United States? Consider that we already HAVE the infastructure here to produce steel. There is NO WAY it is cheaper to use Chinese steel. |
Slave labor in China?
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Maybe China people like to work for free... I don't have an answer Steyr. If I did, I'd find a way to capitalize on it somehow. 
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I know all about labor unions, but even union wages cannot possibly be offset when one considers how expensive it is to bring something a big and bulky as STEEL in quantity from China to the United States. Even if China gave it to us for FREE, I bet we could make it here cheaper than it costs to bring it from China. |
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Sure it's cheaper. They have no problem raping their environment and exploiting their workers. If they lose a few thousand miners a year that's not a tragedy, they have lots of excess mouths to feed anyway. Believe it or not it isn't all that difficult to make quality steel, or all that expensive to float it over here. "Free" trade with slave labor nations is really just slave trade, and it really doesn't benefit us long term. Creating a free market isn't easy, and ours, such as it is, deserves to be protected. It's not "protectionism" to punish criminal behavior. |
I agree, my father worked for an Iranian business man who happened to have a steel business, the steel was shipped all the way from you guessed it Iran. Do I need to tell you he had business all over the place, it seems as though no one had a problem with steel from Iran and it's lower prices. American labor is high priced. Overseas shipping costs isn't that bad. |
Looser regulations on exportation and shipping? Regulation = Expense. Lack of Tarriff for importation is likely. Preferred trade status must have benefits as well. Also never undrestimate the cost savings of slavery. Tarriffs are bad for the end consumer ultimately just like corporate income tax so I like that idea of on tarriff. |
Thats my vote. And that shit sucks too. Fucking shit has hardened steel mixed in and broken fuckin taps. I have to machine that shit, and it so inconsistent it........ 
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| don't be so quick to blame unionized labor. The CEOs, CFOs, COO's and down in the management ladder tend to get high figure salaries, the CEO of my corporation made 10 million last year and another 7 million in perks and bonuses. Meanwhile all of our infrastructure is falling apart and most equipment is outdated and in bad need of repair, yet our company won't ante up and buy new shit, let alone replacement parts...they wonder why our attitude is poor. I'd rather bust my ass all day rather than tell the boss, "Sorry can't fix it, we don't have the part"...It's the most fucking frustrating part of my job. I'm sure somebody will be here shortly to tell me how bad unions are, how they only protect the worthless workers..yada yada yada...but unions were formed to protect all workers from poor management, slave labor and to enable them to make a decent wage for a hard days work. I am a union millwright and i make enough to survive and buy a few nice things for myself, but i am not raping the company of it's profit, that's for damned sure. |
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Labor costs. Unions can deny it all they want, but it is a huge factor. Not just the individual wages, but the asanine rules and such that the unions fight for to create more positions and therefore more union jobs.... for example must have an electrician (union of course) to change a light bulb instead of just changing the damm thing yourself. Promotions based upon senority, not merit, are a union tenet that lead to those who are not the most qualified being put into positions of greater responsibility. Unions also fight against modern technology that would automate the workplace, because it eliminates jobs. A hreat example would be the longshoremans union fighting against automated tracking of containers because the more coveted (and easist) postions were those of guys who got insane amounts of money to essentially wrtie down container numbers all day. Then there is the huge amount of enviornmental regulation here...so great is the impact it may overshadow that of labor costs. Democrats (supported by unions, what a neat little loop we have here) push for more and more of them... they impact not just the way the plant runs, but also the way the suppliers of ore, coal, and other materials run, and cost is added at each and every step. Don't forget the costs of fuel to move all these raw materials, and the $1 or so a gallon in combined taxes. And, last but not least, we have our nations asanine tax code. The Fair Tax proposal system may not be perfect, but by eliminating the taxes paid at every single step, we actually give US made products and economic advantage. That alone makes the idea worth investigating much, much further, but we will never see it allowed to happen. Imagine if, by changing how taxes are paid, US products suddenly got a 23% advantage. |
So if you like what CEO's make, go become one. Can't be that hard, right? You sure seem to have all the answers and know it all already......... |
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As long as Washington Fncks us all by keeping the tax code advantagous to the Free Trade myth of export our Jobs for imports of cheap materials, (that we used to make but have now lost the ablity to do for ourselves) we are all in a world of trouble. I'm as free market / supply side as any business man, but if we tried today to be the "Arsenal of Democracy" as in the 40's, there is No Way we could step up. BIGGER_HAMMER 
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 That is not an entirely true statement, the unions had some culpability, but corporate mis-management was the principal decline in the US steel industry.Bethlehem steel at one time had 300,000 employees (mid 1950's IIRC), that declined to 30,000 employees by the beginning of the 1980's, while paying out one of the most comprhensive (yet underfunded) pension plans in America... to an estimated 200,000 retirees. Poor management planning and aggressive union contracts that favored employee benefit protection at the expense of job/industry protection ultimately led to massive layoffs. Both the employers and the workers lost their livelihoods, failing each other in a cycle of greed based upon past industrial performance, without any real evaluation of the future of their industry. 
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It's not just steel. I recently worked on a project for some doctors who wanted a big enclosure built around a gurney so they could transport dead pigs around the hosptiol with out alarming anyone. They had some drawings from another hosptiol, and so came into the project knowing what materials they'd need, and figured they do me a favor and order it all for me. Well, they got the cheapest aluminum they could find. They said it was 6061-t6 according to the catalog. It had plenty of Asian writing on it and was obviously from china. It didn't seem to be as hard as it should be so I made a few samples and brought them over to the schools materials lab. Instead of Brinell hardness of around 95, it was more like 35, meaning it was probably 6061-0. The jackasses never bothered to heat treat it so it was about as hard as Fluff. I didn't bother doing a tensile test after that. Ultimately we just ordered some good aluminum, ended up being alcoa. The rest is probably never going to get used. On another note, I vastly prefer Brinell hardness tests to Rockwell. I think I'm the only one. -Local |
Don't flame me...i never said i knew everything, nor did i say i had any interest in becoming a CEO or making that much money...frankly, it's a fucking ridiculous wage for what he does, which is mostly passing the buck and schmoozing at the fucking golf course, i have no interest in being like him...as a leader he has paid the stockholders well and neglected his companies infrastructure, supply chain and employees completely.
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Thats absolute bullshit, But 100% correct.  I work with some completely worthless fuckin people. They just sit on their asses and eat fuckin chips and run their mouths all day. They will seriously gather in groups of about 3-5 and just stand there and bullshit for 1/2 hr and dont even bother lookin when the bosses walk through, They know they are'nt going anywhere. They know they are "untouchable". I have more than once said to a friend of mine, as much as it pisses me off, I can understand why companies take their shit and move to China. They assclowns make $25-$30/hr + benefits to do absolutely nothing. A 19 yr old high school grad could do what 3 of these worthless assholes do, twice as fast and for 30% of the money. One guy seriously, I mean this seriously did 2 hours of work a day, MAYBE. Not an assumption, he bragged about it. Made $16/hr and came in on 10hr days 5 days a week, + 6hrs on Saturday. That means without taxes, he made $2048 every 2 weeks + awesome benefits. He did this for 2 years, he got wrote up many times, and the higher ups made my boss remove the slips from his file and throw them away. After 2 years, he finally got fired, lawyered up and is in a lawsuit with our company for unsubstantiated termination or some shit. From what I hear, he has a case, and the rest know the company is gunshy, so they just soak it up.  |
But its such an easy job, so you say, and you know what he is doing wrong.... put your resume in front of the board now! You are such an obvious choice to save everyone. |
...do you honestly think it's that simple?
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So grandma has a cast Iron muffin pan made in the USA back in the 40s. Sure, I'ts heavy as hell & needs grease, and probably cost a days salary back then, but the point is that It's in good enough condition to be passed down to us as a family heirloom. Meanwhile, every GD year I have to buy wifey a new Teflon coated peice of stamped steel that will look like hell after a few batches. I hate the disposable mentality |
I never said his job was easy, but he isn't doing anything for the workers or the companies survival by concentrating his efforts on higher profit margins and doing nothing about an antiquated crumbling giant god-damned steel mill. We have 1000 times the amount of safety we used to have, 1/10 the workers our production is up ....but our maintenance and engineering plans are fucked five ways to friday. The mill is falling apart and investing in that seems to be fruitless as long as production numbers are high. I'm just a serf
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OK, if the steel is ALREADY in the US how come it costs as much to ship as it does to get it from China? |
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Now he have the REAL winner! By the time US steel makers lost their artifically protected status and realized they had to modernize, there was too much environmental BS, and their margins were too low. ETA: My spelling sucks. |
They have a much more awesome post office. |
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The steel industry has been consolidating rapidly since the mid 90's with Mittal/Arcelor being the major player, buying up steel mills around the world. Anyway, labor and currency costs with cheap transportation costs is why China's able to undercut Us steel companies. Steel's a capital-intensive, rather than labor-intensive commodity to produce, but things have changed rapidly in the last few years and there is lotss of money out there looking to be put to use, and lot of it has been invested into capital-poor places like China and India for things like steel mills. |
My brother works for a major tool company. As of late, the company has been subcontracting out to China, and even setting up a plant there. One of the things they subcontracted were these little rubber gasket things that were used in the tools. They got the first batch from China, he was to inspect them. They were out-of-spec. Due to Chinese laws, they could not ship the parts back to China. They ate the cost of the first run. Second run was in-spec. But, during testing, the parts kept failing. They did a chemical analysis... turns out the Chinese didn't bother using the materials they specified. Had those gone in the drills, they would've had to do a MAJOR recall. They tried to get castings done in China, as well, but they were so bad and out-of-spec that the cost-benefit didn't matter, they gave up and just went back to their old suppliers. |
Eaton Hydraulics is in Hutchinson, where I'm from. Long story short, they're slowly movin shit to Mexico. Blackmailing the city for tax abatements to keep the other half there while they set up the first half in Mexico A guy that still works there plays poker with my dad, and he said the hydraulic castings they are getting machined there have a 75% scrap rate.  
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The Chinese bought and shipped to China the entire German steel factory (even the bricks!!!) a few years ago. It was the largest mill in Germany. |
Uhthankyou We can argue about Labor Unions just like we can argue about 9vs45 till we're blue in the face, but the failure to modernize and their refusal to look ahead more than a quarter of the fiscal year is the real reason for their demise. |
The price to make the steel over there is really that low... You get get out of payin the unions. If you bring it in you are going to have to pay the longshoreman to unload it and that anit cheep... BTW- I picked up a heavy lift job out of the hall over the weekend (Can't be a mechanic all the time) and unloaded ~400 long tonn of steel wire. All from China.. The whole time The ship directly behind me was loading scrap steel to be taken to China to be reworked.. It's just that cheep over there |
| There are many reasons why the US is not a major steel producer today, although there are US steel mills here mostly located in Michigan (Grede). The Japanese started to open up steel plants here in the US back in the 70' and 80's. The Jap government subsidised the steel production in those plants in order to lower the price of steel to put US plants out of business. They were successful. You can thank your politicians that allowed this to happen. The union folks voted for the democrats that allowed a foreign government/companies to take over a once prosperous US industry. |
all of NW Indiana is a steel mill...30+ miles of Lake Michigan Shoreline |
| I work for a major manufacturer of all sorts of industrial machinery (I won't name the company), and we're steadily increasing the number of parts we get from China. I'm talking large several-ton cast iron pieces. The quality is crap, but I'm very sad to say it's just as good as the stuff coming from American foundries. |
| It's not just steel. I've been told that timber is shipped from here in the Northwest and processed into lumber and plywood in China, then shipped back. Doesn't make sense. But it's not my bottom line. For some reason, we simply continue to send jobs and work overseas. |