Morristown Tennessee

First I would like to say to the readers of this article that I hope that I am wrong on this issue, but I don’t think that I am going to be wrong about President Trump and his agenda. As most of the people here in the States know, it was the white working class male voters who helped a whole lot in getting Mr. Trump elected last November. I just said working class though I almost said ‘middle-class’, the reason for saying working class instead is because as almost all of us know, the middle class has been sinking into the lower middle class arena for several decades now.  Our American financial society used to always be considered to be labeled into mainly three classes, you had the rich folks who tended to own the businesses where the middle class/working class earned their income while hoping to be able to have a decent life style. Then you had the working poor who were busting their behinds each day in menial jobs who were just trying to survive at all. These folks tend to be less educated and could only find minimum wage type jobs.

I was born in 1956 in a small  town in southwest Virginia to parents who never had the chance to go to college and were factory workers their whole lives. I learned early on that these factories only paid the minimum wage, what they had to by law. During the early 1960’s this wage was $1.25 per hour and this is what they both made. These factories only paid overtime because they were forced to by law but they did not have to give any benefits to their employees like insurance of any kind, or holiday pay, and they did not. Some politicians, mostly just Republicans, who argue that the people making the minimum wage are only teenagers and kids who are in school working part-time. People who live in the real world know that this argument is total BS. If these politicians lived in the real world they would also know that many millions of Americans work for companies that only pay between 10-50 cents per hour above whatever the minimum wage is at the time. Simply put almost all companies only pay their employees as much as they are forced to pay by law. The reason is simple and this reason is honest and true, the less you as an employer pay out in expenses the higher the profit amount that goes to the CEO’s and to the stockholders. This is just like in politics, the two parties want all of the credit on good bills and they are not willing to share in the glory. With companies the top end wants higher profits so that they can get bigger paychecks, the Stock Market then reinforces this theology of greed. Throughout human history it has been true that the people who are physically making the products receive the lowest income. Any pie is only finite, they are only just so large, their pieces are just capable of being so big, the trouble is when it comes to business everyone is wanting a bigger slice of that pie and the only way to achieve this is to take away from others who are in that pie pan with them.

For 14 years I lived in the Morristown Tennessee area so I am going to use Berkline as an example of greed and of not caring anything about the ‘working class’. When I moved there I went to change over my car plates and driver’s license as the law requires. I went there on a Monday morning shortly after they opened for business. When I came into the building there were two rather long lines of young Hispanic folks already there so I just fell into the back of a line. A lady that worked inside noticed me and she came out and got me and took me inside. When I asked her about the two lines of folks she told me that they were only there to get a state I.D. so that they could go to work, they weren’t there to do the same things I was there for. While doing the paperwork for me she told me her story about Berkline. She said she had worked there for 14 years and was only making about 25 cents above the  minimum wage. She said that one Monday morning as she was at her job station waiting for the ‘get to work’ buzzer to sound that her foreman came up to her with a very young Hispanic male who couldn’t even speak English and told her that this was her replacement that she was fired. You see, the company was busing in Mexican folks to take the local folks jobs. Think about it for a moment, you as a company fire your experienced workers who are barely making the minimum wage for people who have no experience, why would you do that? The answer is simple, the new hires were being paid less than the minimum wage and they knew that these folks would work hard and that they were afraid to complain about the work or the working conditions. Berkline was the largest employer in Morristown at that time and they basically fired almost all of the local workers. This situation lasted for a few years then the company decided it was cheaper to quit shipping workers up there from Mexico and just close the Morristown factory and move their operation to Mexico, so they did. The local economy lost hundreds of jobs at it really hurt the local economy. Now this type of issue is a big part of what Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric was about, punishing companies who do and or have done this type of thing. By the way, Berkline is the company that makes Lazy Boy furniture.

Now to the meat of this article. As we all know Mr. Trump is very pro business and I do not have any problem with this fact. Yet even though he says he will bring the “good” jobs back to America and he is/was talking about manufacturing jobs, as he has often said the “we” here in America don’t make anything any more. This sounds great and I hope he can do it. He also talks about lowering the business income tax down to about 15% and I do not have a problem with that either, as long as all the loopholes are eliminated so that they are actually paying that 15%.  Mr. Trump has a history of bashing Union workers and their Unions because they make too much money. He has recently bashed the Auto Industries and then he bashed the workers and their Union at the Carrier Air Conditioner factory in Indianapolis Indiana for the same thing. He very obviously believes that Union workers are lazy and overpaid. Mr. Trump has also spoken out several times about the minimum wage being to high as he has said ‘companies can’t afford it’. So here is what I believe Mr. Trumps ideology is about ‘bringing the good jobs’ back to this Country. His policies may help to bring jobs here to the States and they may well be industrial manufacturing type of jobs. But, here is my concern, let’s say a new steel mill opens back up in Bethlehem PA and they hire 500 workers to fill those open jobs, at $5.00 per hour with no benefits of any kind. Would this be a ‘good’ job for the employees? If he is able to get rid of the minimum wage and overtime laws (which he has also said he favors because of the expense to the company’s) Americans  will find themselves working ‘menial’ jobs like sales clerks and at burger joints like McDonald’s for two or three dollars per hour.

Before you say that this can’t happen, that Mr. Trump would never do something like this I want you to consider two pieces of facts. 1) Think about it , all of Mr. Trump’s businesses  products he has them made in third-world countries. The reason is very simple, higher profits for him personally. He has his products made in countries where there is no EPA laws to worry about, no minimum wage laws so the sweat shops can employ children and women at a dollar per day wages, no overtime pay laws, no benefits, no OSHA laws to protect the workers. He has spent his whole adult life preying on the poorest of the poor for his own personal benefit, do you really think he has all of a sudden changed, really? 2) When a company leaves the States and moves to (for example) Thailand or Malaysia or China they made the move to bring down their costs, if your company is on the Stock Market this is a great move for your stockholders. But who loses when this is done, folks it is the working class people here in the States. Now for the purpose of an illustration let us take cars as an example or shirts or shoes. The company closes their factory in let’s say Michigan and moved their production to Mexico for the purpose of cutting the company’s cost per unit. Have you ever seen the price of that product lowered for the consumer? The company’s aren’t going to move back to the States unless it is financially profitable for them to do so. I honestly believe that Mr. Trump’s intentions are to make himself and his billionaire buddies the recipients of a cash windfall at the expense of the people physically doing the work. You may get a new job because of Mr. Trump’s policies but if it is a $3.00 per hour job but the cost of living doesn’t drop with the wages there are going to be a lot more homeless and starving people right here in the States. Are you really naive enough to believe Mr. Trump gives a damn about you or your family? Like I said at the beginning of this article, I hope that I am wrong about these issues but I seriously doubt  that I am wrong on this.