#manufacturing #GeneralMotors #PlantClosings #Lordstown
All signs point to a booming economy and job market, but folks in Lordstown, Ohio, are not seeing it.
General Motors is closing its plant there. Workers have a decision: move to another part of the country that has more jobs, or retrain and change careers.
In May 2019, GM sold the Lordstown plant to a company that will make electric trucks.
Heather Long wrote an article for the Washington Post about what’s happening in Lordstown. The article was also published March 9, 2019, in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Many workers are opting to go to other GM plants around the country. Others don’t want to leave the place they call home, where their children and extended family are, Long writes.
Perhaps some will get jobs at the new truck plant.
The workers qualify for the federal government’s marquee retraining program, Trade Adjustment Assistance, that covers cost of retraining classes up to two years, plus a weekly stipend to attend them, Long writes. About 30 percent of the workers have signed up for TAA, she says.
Still, many workers say they are too old to go back to school, or that they tried, but found the classes overwhelming, Long writes.
The Greater Youngstown area, where Lordstown is located, is among many urban settings, mostly in the Rust Belt, that are continuing to lose relatively well-paying manufacturing jobs, Long writes.
In this case, the Lordstown plant produced the compact Chevy Cruze, while the bulk of the U.S. car market is dominated by trucks and sport-utility vehicles.
The Lordstown example is one of many in which good-paying jobs, for the least educated, are disappearing, and unlikely to return.
If you are among this group of workers, you can’t be assured that your job will be there for you for as long as you want. Progress in automation, though good overall for manufacturing and commerce, is your personal enemy.
So what do you do? First, you have to think about a Plan B. That is, a way to make an income when your job goes away. Second W-2 jobs may not be the best answer.
However, there are many vehicles out there that allow you to make a potential income that could eventually dwarf your current one, by simply spending a few, part-time hours a week of your off-work time. It doesn’t matter your age, background or skill level. To check out one of the best such vehicles, message me.
As for the Lordstown GM workers, and others in a similar position, your workplace options are few, and mostly not good. You have to think about doing something different.
Waiting for the plant to reopen is futile. If re-education in manufacturing is difficult or impossible for you, try getting re-educated in something a little less taxing. Unless you are really willing to go out of your comfort zone, you may even have to figure out how to cobble together an income from jobs that will certainly pay you less per hour than you were making.
We all can feel bad for these workers, though many of us have seen this coming for a long time. It would have been easier had they thought about a Plan B years ago.
Alas, that is not reality. We, as workers, can’t stop progress in manufacturing. Companies have to look hard at cutting costs, and becoming nimble as markets for products change quickly. Some workers will suffer as a result, but those workers have to figure out how to solve that problem on their own, taking advantage of any available help.
Many say the U.S. doesn’t make things anymore. Well, it does, but with many fewer people.
Peter
Tag Archives: lost jobs
ONE PERSON CAN CHANGE THE WORLD
#AndyAndrews #ChangeTheWorld #OnePersonCanChangeTheWorld
t’s hard to determine what thing, words etc. will motivate someone.
The words, “By your hand, the world will be fed, or live, or be free” motivated lots of well-known folks in Andy Andrews’ book, “The Lost Choice: A Legend of Personal Discovery.”
The book relates a story of pieces of a relic that travels through history and winds up in the hands of a young couple in Colorado.
The translated inscription offered motivation to various historical figures.
The point: you can make choices that can change the world.
That’s a particularly appropriate message for folks today.
We tend to let circumstances dictate our choices. Certainly, circumstances can affect some choices, but only we can dictate our choices.
It’s perhaps best to illustrate it this way: a lost job is a circumstance, usually beyond one’s control. Blaming people or institutions for our circumstance is not the best choice to expend our energy. Looking for a different way to earn money would be a much better choice.
Getting a different job may not “change the world,” but it could change YOUR world for the moment.
So the new job you got, if you were so fortunate, doesn’t pay as well as the one you lost. You could choose to blame the changing world, and long for the good old days that will never come back. That would not be the best choice.
Or, you could look for something completely different from what you are doing – or did – and really change your world, and perhaps many others’ worlds as well. That would be a better choice.
Where does one find such a world-changing vehicle? Actually, there are many such vehicles out there, for those willing to look for them. To check out one of the best, message me.
Andrews’ book illustrates in great detail how the actions of one person can change the world. Many of the individuals he features became well-known for their feats. Some were not so well-known, but no less extraordinary.
The young couple’s choice to research the origins of the relic they’d found in their yard, rather than, say, use it as a paper weight and forget about it, or, worse, throw it away as insignificant, was world-changing for them.
We can change the world in big ways, or little ways. We can start a business that ultimately employs hundreds, or even thousands, or we can pick up litter we see on the street and discard it properly.
So, pondering the choices you make, or have made, what choices would you make in the future to change the world. How would you help others more? If, indeed, you believe that what goes around comes around, you’ll believe that the more you concentrate on helping others, regardless of your circumstances, the more likely you will ultimately be rewarded handsomely.
We don’t always know when such rewards will come for us, so we bask in the reward of knowing that what we did made someone else’s life better, even for a moment.
So, make good choices. Don’t let circumstances force bad choices. And, be on the lookout for the person already in your life, or who will come into your life, that will present you with a world-changing choice.
Peter
POLITICAL SCANDAL AND LOST JOBS
#PoliticalScandal #LostJobs #NewCareers
An engineer, 50, at the peak of his career, loses his job and can’t even get a callback, after an interview.
The CEO of the company he’d worked for was arrested and jailed and, just like that, 100,000 construction jobs are gone.
Today, that engineer operates a small, hair-removal salon in a mall on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Operation Car Wash, a sprawling investigation that traced corruption from a Brasilia gas station to the highest level of government in Brazil, has wrecked the economy there.
The investigation was discussed at length in an article by Marina Lopes and Nick Miroff in The Washington Post. It was also published June 25, 2017, in The Atlanta Journal Constitution.
It has put in prison not only several politicians, but also executives in Brazil’s construction, petrochemical and meat industries. They are charged with trading bribes in lieu of lucrative government contracts, the article says.
Fortunately, we are facing nothing like that here, though, in the last decade, lots of 50-year-olds and others who had good jobs have lost them. Many of them have had to take jobs that paid much less than the jobs they’d lost – if they were fortunate enough to find work at all.
In Brazil, workers paid a steep price for the games of the rich and powerful. Unlike in Brazil, we in the U.S. have the ability, or can cultivate the ability, to weather hard times better, the article says.
The trick for us is that we have to be open to different things – not just what makes us comfortable.
As we find that replacement jobs pay much less, and offer fewer benefits, to thrive and prosper, we must be willing to check out things that we would have never dreamed we would do.
There are ways to prosper in trying times. When such vehicles are presented, though, one must be willing and open to check them out.
If you are hard-working, and what you are doing now does not suit you, your lifestyle, your family and your future, and would like to check out something different, message me.
Brazilians support the Car Wash investigation, hoping that it will clean house and will create a new culture of transparency, the article says.
Sometimes, one must go through something terrible to find out how strong he or she might be.
Sometimes, doors are suddenly closed, yet windows, or even bigger doors, are opened.
“The Brazilian engineering industry is finished,” the article quotes Silvia Boccagini, 52, a pipe technician in Brazil.
As for Ricardo Coelho, the 50-year-old engineer the article featured, he’s making more money with his hair-removal business than he did as a civil engineer.
“I’ll never go back,” the article quotes him.
Some of us can’t go back, even if we want to. It’s time we found something great to go to, rather than complain that we can’t go back.
Peter