Chinese textile workers training American workers to do their jobs

[Randy W]

in the NY Times

 

Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King

Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

 

Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in April, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.

“They’re quick learners,” Ms. Ni said after showing two fresh recruits how to tease errant wisps of cotton from the machines’ grinding gears. “But they have to learn to be quicker.”

Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.

Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.

At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive. In Lancaster County, where Indian Land is located, Keer has found residents desperate for work, even at depressed wages, as well as access to cheap and abundant land and energy and heavily subsidized cotton.

 

 

[amberjack1234]

in the NY Times

 

Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King

Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

 

Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in April, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.

 

“They’re quick learners,” Ms. Ni said after showing two fresh recruits how to tease errant wisps of cotton from the machines’ grinding gears. “But they have to learn to be quicker.”

 

Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.

 

Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.

 

At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive. In Lancaster County, where Indian Land is located, Keer has found residents desperate for work, even at depressed wages, as well as access to cheap and abundant land and energy and heavily subsidized cotton.

 

 

It's about time that the US finally figured this out. The days of making 60 to 80 dollars an hour on an assembly line for low tech jobs is over. Before it all went bust my ex wife had a niece and her husband worked for Ford Motor Company in Virginia on a assembly line making $120 per hour. Ridiculous. No wonder we went down the tube.

[tsap seui]

in the NY Times

 

Chinese Textile Mills Are Now Hiring in Places Where Cotton Was King

Twenty-five years ago, Ni Meijuan earned $19 a month working the spinning machines at a vast textile factory in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.

 

Now at the Keer Group’s cotton mill in South Carolina, which opened in April, Ms. Ni is training American workers to do the job she used to do.

 

“They’re quick learners,” Ms. Ni said after showing two fresh recruits how to tease errant wisps of cotton from the machines’ grinding gears. “But they have to learn to be quicker.”

 

Once the epitome of cheap mass manufacturing, textile producers from formerly low-cost nations are starting to set up shop in America. It is part of a blurring of once seemingly clear-cut boundaries between high- and low-cost manufacturing nations that few would have predicted a decade ago.

 

Textile production in China is becoming increasingly unprofitable after years of rising wages, higher energy bills and mounting logistical costs, as well as new government quotas on the import of cotton.

 

At the same time, manufacturing costs in the United States are becoming more competitive. In Lancaster County, where Indian Land is located, Keer has found residents desperate for work, even at depressed wages, as well as access to cheap and abundant land and energy and heavily subsidized cotton.

 

 

VERY interesting article. I can'[t copy anything off of it but read the last few paragraphs about American workers being tardy and how the Chinese trainers are struggling ot get American workers t okeep the automated machines up close to the 97% that the Chinese are used to....LOL

 

I feel like posting BIly Preston's "Circles" song...life go round in circles, uh huh.

 

My parents families worked in textile mills just outside Charlotte, NC in Belmont, NC. They lived in company houses, the hwole bit. As a kid we were taken through where they lived in those close placed 4 room houses. Then all of those mills closed down, many large brick mill buildings still stand.

 

How clever of the Chinese to bring some of that work back...the taking raw cotton and doing the spinning, carding, and cleaning processes...so the yarn can be sent back to China to make us more Walmart clothes. Man, how I wish I could tell this to my grand parents and mother and father....life goes in circles. My father and his brothers escaped the mills, my father going into the gas and oil pipeline business at 19...giving he, my mother, and us kids a better quality of life....with my one uncle buying up mills houses and selling them to young folks who worked in the mills, who then lost their jobs and he getting them back to resale them, again and again.

 

And I loved the wording about Americans "desperately" needing jobs, even working at "depressed wages". Oh well, that is life.

 

God Bless America....we REALLY need someone to bless us, after we ran the country into the freakin' ground. China seems to be following what any country full of capitalism does, running up their housing and stock markets into the unreal stratosphere, and paying wages, as Larry pointed out that eventually runs the CEO's to look for other countries to have things made. Welcome to "bailouts" and other countries getting your workers work, Chinartucky. Good luck.

 

My question is, now that China is buying our debt to the point of we'd have to call them to ask for a loan so we could afford to go to war with them.... ahh, who is going to bail out China?

 

AS an uneducated dummy, I always have thought....why aren't we working WITH China, trying to work as partners instead of still pointing our crooked finger at then and acting like they are the dang red communist enemy? Hell, we have been our own worst enemy...and look at Vietnam today if you want to see how that awful communism plays out when we keep our arrogant noses out of it.

 

Yeah, I know...hippie talk. Hard to get a word in when the leaders seem to be stuck with antique fear mongering Joseph McCarthy mentalities.

[Allon]

Good article, Randy. I think the comments about American workers is mostly BS. American workers are the most productive in the world. I have read just as many complaints about Chinese workers from America factory owners.

 

But I think China coming back here is a good thing. The US has to get out of the "investor" cycle and start making products to sell. Unfortunately here, in this article, the profits go back to China. Same thing happened to Volkswagen, Honda, and a number of other names.

[tsap seui]

Keer spent 218 million of it's money to build a facility in SC. I can't imagine them importing Chinese workers to do all of the construction so American companies made money doing the construction of their mills, just like when Volkswagen built their huge plant in Pa. years ago. We can only assume Kerr is paying corporate taxes on their mill, as did Volkswagen and the others....unless SC is letting them operate for nothing in order to let them build a mill in their state?? And what about the American workers who are working in the Kerr mill? Let's hope the Chinese are paying them and taxes are being paid? LOL Looks to me like the local economy in SC is enjoying a nice change of pace. A few workers are getting of of unemployment and public assistance.

 

So the corporate profits are being sent back to China, etc...after corporate taxes are taken out, new equipment is bought and, Americans and paid to repair equipment, electricity is paid to American suppliers, water and sewer bills are paid to American suppliers, and the list goes on. Are companies supposed to give all of their profits that their business makes back to local or federal governments. As an American business owner, they just taxed me, I just wasn't expected to give them ALL of corporate my profits too.

 

Having been a business owner most of my adult life, I can tell you, yes, American workers are for the most part very good.....but as a business owner, tardiness does happen, and if you want your efficiency and production numbers to get and stay high, you better be on the ball as a supervisor. The article stated that in many cases the American work force was "desperate for work"...when I read that tardiness was a problem, that doesn't sound very desperate to me when I look at it with a strictly businessman's eye. I can understand a learning curve on the new machines...to a point....but those efficiency ratings are way below the 97% the Chinese workers were routinely pumping out.

 

Not trying to diss American workers here, but not just looking at the comments in the article from an employee viewpoint either. In this day and age especially, a business had better be efficient, timely, and productive...or it just ain't gonna last very long. I don't care where the workers are from. Can't get to work on time or perform your job in a timely manner......goodbye...next worker, please.

 

Business is business, if it were run from a strictly employee viewpoint, well, there wouldn't be anymore business. Just ask Walmart. Or anyone else who ever ran a successful business.

[Mick]

I think the ideal business is one that strikes a positive balance in which both the small business owner and the employees prosper. Often that requires the owner to sacrifice a small percentage of his or her profits early on in order to keep and develop good employees. Fact is, if you don't pay quality people what they are worth, they will go elsewhere. If you keep your quality people, your business will grow because you are turning out a consistently better service or product. Problems arise when either side gets too greedy - if workers want too much pay and benefits and drive the company into the ground, or if the owners become enamored of great profit margins at the expense of allowing the workers to have a decent quality of life. It is a tough balancing act, but one that I have seen work well time and time again, provided you have an enlightened business owner. On a personal note, after earning an graduate degree in another field, I went back to school and also earned a MBA. What I learned studying business was a shocker: I LEARNED I NEVER WANTED TO OWN A BUSINESS OR WORK IN MANAGEMENT. I did run my own consulting business, but it was a service oriented business, geared around writing grants, business plans, policies and procedures, and free-lance entertainment articles (read free concert tickets).

 

Here in this area, Toyota has a big plant in Huntsville and Hyundai has a huge operation just outside of Montgomery. Nissan is up near Nashville. All are doing well it seems. The Hyundai plant is running 24/7 last I heard.

Edited August 5, 2015 by Mick (see edit history)

[Greg.D.]

When the Japanese started building plants here, the Big 3 started warning people how unpatriotic it would be to buy a car form the Japanese company because the "profits would go back to Japan".

 

Then, a few smart people pointed out: American factory worker gets wages, dealer gets sales, localities get taxes, local repairmen get repair jobs, and Japanese companies have the lowest ratio of salary differential between upper management and floor worker and that money goes back into the factory for improvements. Oh, and, for the most part, we got better cars out of the deal.

 

When Chinese management "complains" about workers not doing something to a standard - like not being late for work - it might mean they can't understand why our workers don't come 30 minutes early to clean the bathrooms, kiss the asses of the managers, grovel, bow, kow-tow, suck up, work for free, etc. In China, the kids are either not there with the parents or grandparents are taking care of them. The Chinese workers are living in dorms right next to the factory. The American workers might get there 6 minutes late (before being docked a quarter hour) because of things like sick kids, traffic, etc.

 

And the 97% number? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE China, but they know how to game everything. The lower the people are on the salary scale, the more conscientious they are. So, yeah, I could see them working their asses off. But, 97 is probably impossible. Its like you driving on a 150 mile trip at 75 miles per hour: you are not going to average 75 mph; more like 65 when you count all the little things in. Maybe their best hour in a day is 97%.

 

Finally: would all the idiots who post comments on every web article about China stop saying they are working for slave wages in inhumane conditions? That hasn't been true since Gerald Ford was president.

 

For a great story about the demise of American manufacturing, this story:

 

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/561/nummi-2015

 

about the joint GM/Toyota factory out in Fremont California (a success!) and how unions AND management together wasted an opportunity to save GM and their jobs.

[Randy W]

. . . and the People's Daily takes notice (although it seems to consist almost entirely of exact quotes from the Times article)

 

Chinese Textile Mills Move to America

By Liu Rong (People's Daily Online) 00:05, August 05, 2015