..of Nikitas3.com
Naturally all Americans want our workers to make good wages. But these unionized Schweitzer workers have been making far higher wages than the average or median in a place like rural Berkshire County where living costs are relatively low. So companies like Schweitzer and General Electric in Pittsfield were finding those wages harder and harder to pay in a competitive global environment. And this story has been repeated over and over across the fruited plain, of how greedy labor unions broke the steel industry and the railroad industry, and now are in the process of milking the auto industry out of business, leaving ensuing generations with nothing.
That a small-town 55-year-old mill supervisor in Massachusetts has a second home in Florida speaks to the excesses of unionization. These workers are, in effect, putting themselves out of a job, as did the unionized workers at General Electric in Pittsfield. Thus if America is going to continue to have a solid employment base, we need to allow companies to pay good market wages that are sustainable within that business’s market niche – as Crane Paper does — not artificial union wages that are not. (Crane workers wisely voted down a unionization proposal several years back.)
The Eagle article went on to explain that Schweitzer was losing $2 million to $8 million per year, and that rising electricity costs were a large part of the problem. Yet here again, extremist environmentalism in Massachusetts, which comes from the political left as does taxation, regulation and unionism, is severely restricting all forms of economic production, and is driving up costs for everything including electricity by restricting the supply. And rising power rates, often twice the national average, are stressing all businesses in The Bay State, spurring more talk of economic exodus.
Perhaps the state of Massachusetts could have worked out a tax relief program for the paper mills, or the unions could have made concessions. But the Democrats here in Western Massachusetts have sat on their hands as companies closed up shop. After all their socialist view is that government and unions give nothing, and that concessions are only for capitalist employers.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ far-left governor Deval Patrick has announced a $1 billion state bond program to spur a biotech industry. But this will be more of the same folly, merely recycling existing cash around the commonwealth. It will funnel more and more taxpayer money, at the discretion of the bureaucracy, not to methodical economic development but to scattering tens of millions at a clip to the ultra-liberal public universities and community colleges, and to politically-friendly entrepreneurs, at the expense of the state’s taxpayers.
So rather than granting targeted tax relief to keep existing jobs like Schweitzer-Mauduit’s; or urging the unions to make pay, benefit and pension concessions; or fighting ‘green extremism’ that is blocking development everywhere in Massachusetts, Democrats are betting on the usual somewhere-down-the-road pie-in-the-sky biotech jobs that may never evolve. After all, many states are going “bio”, and it ultimately is the overall business climate in a state that is going to determine whether companies succeed or fail. And Massachusetts’ record is not worth recommending.
And in a typical twist, the state of Massachusetts now is funding a $92,500 grant to a Pittsfield job-training firm to help the unemployed and soon-to-be-unemployed paper workers. “These funds will provide intensive one-on-one training for workers who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” said a statement from Patrick.
Now this is typical. These workers are not losing their jobs “through no fault of their own”; they lost their jobs because a coalition on the political left — the greedy unions, the taxing and regulating state of Massachusetts and the no-growth environmentalists — drove the paper industry out. And now the same state will rush in with exclusive funds for re-training these unionized workers, bypassing thousands of Berkshire’s unemployed people who have suffered for years after the same forces drove General Electric out, people who have had none of the high wages, savings, severance packages and pension plans of the unionized paper workers.
See how the liberals grease each others’ palms while leaving everyone else out in the cold?
What we are witnessing in Massachusetts are the four horsemen of the leftist economic apocalypse: First, continuing a trend established throughout the 20th century, union activism and intransigence have driven up labor costs to the point where jobs are unsustainable. Second heavy taxation, regulation, bureaucracy, corruption and state mandates have squeezed businesses to the max, with Massachusetts known for having one of the worst economic climates in America. Third, extremist environmentalism has made business incubation or expansion virtually impossible. And fourth, in the case of Schweitzer, the leftist anti-smoking movement had throttled the cigarette industry.
These forces are creating a perfect storm, driving prosperity away from the Northeast to places we all know as The Bush States, where prosperity is a given and opportunity abounds. One New England state is thriving, however, and that is New Hampshire, which has a long tradition as a low-tax, conservative state. But recent Democrat gains there will kill that golden goose too if not reversed.
Mitt Romney, the Presidential candidate and former Republican governor of Massachusetts — who, like most Republicans in this state for the last 50 years had little real power — often has told a stump story about a Massachusetts businessman who tried for 6 years to get a new building permit approved, then went to North Carolina and got it in 6 months. This is the type of climate we are up against here in The People’s Republic.
To watch Pittsfield mayor James Ruberto practically hold a ticker-tape parade when 10 jobs come to town is infuriating when considering that his party’s union goons destroyed 11,000 jobs. To watch every single economic development project in Berkshire County opposed by no-growth environmentalists is disturbing. To watch the Pittsfield Conservation Commission on television is like observing the Soviet Politburo in action, with each proposal relentlessly nitpicked by sleepy-head bureaucrats, while enviro activists attend each meeting, and comment on every fence post and drainage ditch.
Meanwhile, the town of Dalton, home of non-union Crane Paper, is clean, proper, thriving and has a very bright future.
Take your pick.
Share This
