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Where manufacturing jobs are plentiful, Trump's supporters want better


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2017 Jun 20, 1:12pm   1,001 views  1 comment

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ELKHART, Indiana—While many politicians, including President Donald Trump, say the United States desperately needs more manufacturing jobs, this small industrial city has more than enough.

The problem, for many workers here, is one of quality, not quantity.

That’s the case with Brandon Seitz. The rail-thin 32-year-old worked for 12 years on an assembly line at one of the local recreational-vehicle factories that have made Elkhart the RV Capital of the World. The job, Seitz says, nearly wrecked his health.

His pay, as for assembly workers at most RV factories, was a combination of a low hourly wage and a large production bonus, referred to as the “piece rate.” The frantic rush to meet output targets — and thus earn bonuses — made it easier for accidents to happen, he says. During his first year, he tore tendons in his knee when a steel frame hit him.

manufacturing revival was well under way in Elkhart by the time Trump began promising one during last year’s presidential campaign. During the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the local unemployment rate hit 20 percent, among the highest in the country. It has since recovered to a seasonally unadjusted 1.9 percent, its lowest in nearly two decades and far better than the national rate, an adjusted 4.3 percent.

The RV industry accounts for a big chunk of that improvement. Local officials estimate that half of jobs here are related to manufacturing and that half of those are linked to RVs. Today, Elkhart County and the surrounding region produce 85 percent of U.S.-made RVs. Unit sales last year were the highest since the 1970s.

Attractive or not, jobs in the RV industry are emblematic of the kind of work that is increasingly the best option for blue-collar workers. The industry is prone to booms and busts, as wells as shorter-term fluctuations throughout the year, which can mean frequent layoffs, though that hasn’t been a problem amid the current production boom.

What’s happened in Elkhart has occurred across industrial America. The average wage on U.S. factory floors dropped below the average for all private-sector workers in 2006, and the gap has widened since. Manufacturing workers now earn an average of $20.79 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, below the $22 an hour for all workers. Service workers, meanwhile, pushed ahead of their factory-floor counterparts in 2008 and now earn an average of $21.79 an hour.

A 2016 study by the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, concluded that a third of production workers in the U.S. earn so little that they qualify for some form of government assistance, such as food stamps. Many of these workers weren’t putting in enough hours to earn more, the study found, but about a third worked at least 35 hours a week.

For the majority of RV factory workers, though, conditions remain much as they have been for years.

Cassidy Davies jumped from one RV job to another earlier in his career, he says, because the atmosphere in many plants was unbearable.

“I’ve seen people get into fist fights because somebody else used their power-drill battery,” says the 29-year-old. “And the money is constantly going up and down” as production rises and falls.

He now works in a large Thor factory, which he says he likes better than any of the other places he worked. That doesn’t mean he thinks it’s the sort of job on which he can build a career.

“I really don’t know how long I can do it,” he says, “because you’re beating the crap out of yourself every day.”

Much More, 10-15 Minute Read: http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-workers-elkhart/

#Jobs #Employment #BlueCollar #FlyOverCountry #Manufacturing

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