Exporting Jobs, Importing Workers

[unhappycamper]

Exporting Jobs, Importing Workers
Thursday 16 September 2010
by: Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

Maybe you're one of the thousands of young lawyers in America working in some low-skill, part-time job because law firms have cut so many of the starting positions you were educated to take. If so, I have good news: Jobs for young lawyers are now mushrooming in companies that provide legal services to U.S. corporations.

~snip~

But Obama could take one symbolic step on his own that would create jobs for about a dozen American workers. It involves the construction of a memorial and statue of Martin Luther King Jr. on our National Mall. After all, King's historic 1963 march on Washington was about jobs and poverty -- so why not have some of our highly skilled bricklayers and stone masons who're now unemployed build this monument in honor of King's legacy?

Seems sensible -- but guess what? The quasi-governmental foundation overseeing the King memorial project doesn't seem to have much sense. It is importing eight to 12 workers from - believe it or not - China to do this job!

Why don't they just poke every out-of-work American in the eye with a sharp stick? As the Bricklayers union said in exasperation, this is "wrong, wrong, wrong."

Well, sniffed a spokeswoman for the foundation, only the centerpiece of the memorial is outsourced to Chinese craftworkers, so stop your griping. Ironically, that centerpiece is named the "Stone of Hope," but apparently no one at the foundation has any grasp of irony, so they are proceeding to obtain work visas to bring the Chinese into our nation's capital and construct King's monument. Presumably, America's vast pool of jobless workers will be allowed to watch them.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[fasttense]

2. Stone of hope.

That millstone around our necks call "free" trade or neoliberalism will sink us all.

[stray cat]

3. Importing educated workers in engineering, science and technology

If others have the education that Americans lack

[HughBeaumont]

4. People like you crack me up. It's COST, not KNOWLEDGE that's the problem.

Unbelievable that people still FALL for this sucktastic talking point.

[Quantess]

10. Sucktastic it is.

[Hannah Bell]

12. why are you here if you believe that?

[Quantess]

14. I wonder that, too.

[HughMoran]

15. An engineer in China is doing my job

I'm one of the best in the world at what I do too, sadly, they would work for 1/4 of what I made.

I hope you don't believe that crap.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[valerief]

6. MLK is rolling in his grave. nt

[HughBeaumont]

7. He's been on spin cycle since the mid-70s, in all likelihood.

On super-rotation after Reagan made racism fashionable again.

On tornado after 8.28.2010's FailFest.

[madokie]

8. LOL

I've got work to do today so this looks like a good place to stop reading and go get busy.

Yup, Dr King has been on spin cycle for a long long time, so true.

[SlipperySlope]

9. What's next, have the Chinese build a César Chávez memorial too?

[Starry Messenger]

11. offs

Travesty.

[pampango]

13. "By awarding the contract to a Chinese artist, the foundation financing the project has touched on

sensitivities at the core of U.S.-Sino relations: nationalism, racism and worries about what China's emergence as an economic and cultural world power means for America."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/14/AR2007081401691.html

"Atlanta resident Lea Winfrey Young says the "outsourcing" by U.S. companies and organizations to China has gone too far this time. She and her husband, Gilbert Young, a painter, are leading a group of critics who argue that an African American -- or any American -- should have been picked for such an important project."

He said scouts for the foundation spotted Lei's work at a sculpting workshop in St. Paul, Minn., and approached him. The sole criterion for choosing him, Johnson said, was artistic ability -- Lei's skill at capturing personalities in sculptures, his expertise in hewing granite and his extensive experience with large public monuments.

Lei was selected by a design team that included mostly African Americans, and that the artist is collaborating closely with Jon Onye Lockard, a painter and a University of Michigan lecturer, and Louisville-based sculptor Ed Hamilton, both of whom are African American.

Lei has hired 10 other Chinese sculptors, many of them local university professors, to help him create the giant monument. But it is Lei who will carve critical features such as King's face and hands.