Factory work seeps overseas

Work just begun

ELKHART, Ind./WASHINGTON, Dec 2, (RTRS): As President-elect Donald Trump received a warm welcome in Indianapolis on Thursday for helping to preserve 1,000 manufacturing jobs, embattled workers elsewhere in the state said that his work had just begun.

United Technologies Corp’s decision to keep half of the 2,100 Indiana jobs it was to shift to Mexico allowed Republican Trump to claim credit after he promised to revive the industrial base of the United States in his populist election campaign.

But the author of “The Art of the Deal” will have a lot more dealmaking to do if he wants to stop the steady erosion of manufacturing jobs from the country because of automation and lower costs abroad.

“Now that they’ve saved jobs at one plant, we want to see it happen here and elsewhere. If Trump doesn’t make that happen then people are going to be very disappointed in him,” said Susan Haines, a production coordinator at auto-parts maker CTS Corp, which plans to eliminate 230 Indiana jobs by 2018 as it ships production overseas.

Across Indiana, manufacturers are eliminating at least 5,000 jobs this year under pressure from global competition, according to a Reuters analysis of Labor Department filings. At least 4,060 jobs are disappearing because employers are shifting work to Mexico or other countries, the filings showed.

And 960 workers employed by five companies in Indiana are losing their jobs because their US employers are not able to compete with cheaper imported goods.

Some of those facing job cuts said they did not expect Trump to intervene on their behalf, but they will expect him to take broader steps to protect factory work.

“If in four years it’s the same old crap that’s going on we’ll give another candidate a shot,” said Michael Mobley, whose employer, Aurora Casket, eliminated 35 jobs in September and plans to cut another 35 jobs next year as it shifts work to Mexico from Aurora, Indiana.

As elsewhere in the United States, factory work in Indiana lags as the broader economy has recovered from the 2008-2009 recession. Manufacturing employment is down 7.4 percent from January 2007 levels even as total employment in the state has risen 3 percent since then, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.