| Author
|
Post |
 
|
|
untanglingwebs
El Supremo
|
"For that, Michigan business must create jobs in many sectors.
Our economy still must diversify or die."
During the early 90's I wrote the so called "State Plan" for the agency I worked for. To do so I received materials from the state that discussed the economic situation in the state and Genesee County and projectionss for our future. Every year the state warned communities they needed to diversify if they wanted to survive. In the Flint area the push was on to replace manufacturing jobs with far lower paying service industry jobs. Is it any wonder the city and county are in such bad economic situations?
Obviously the state was unable to implement their own advice. Competition for manufacturing and commercial jobs has created a situation in which communities have to give away much in the way of tax breaks in order to persuade companies to invest in their community. I remember my schock when years ago I saw that Flint was advertising in Canada and offering large incentives (10K per job) based on the number of jobs to be created if a company moved here.
Educators in Grand blanc and other communities have told me they feel sorry for Flint students who move into their community. They say our Flint students are often so far behind academically they can't do the required class work for their grade level. Any diversification will require a trainable and/or educated workforce for them to draw employees from.
Companies moving here will want their employees to be in a safe working environment and with our cuts in public safety, Flint cannot assure any company of that.
Our Voice: Auto jobs are holding ground, but diversified economy needed for Michigan comeback
Published: Sunday, December 05, 2010, 6:00 AM
Editorial Board | The Flint Journal
Follow Share this story
Story tools
Thanksgiving eve was a red-letter day for local General Motors employees who can keep bringing home the bacon.
Let us give thanks. And continue to strive beyond the auto industry for a diversified economy immune to the whipsawing of a one-sector economy.
For, as exciting as it is to keep 135 people working who otherwise faced layoff, GM’s investment of $138.3 million into Flint Engine Operations will only save jobs.
That means that our local economy won’t slip as far as it would have after GM closes the last of the Buick City factories. Flint Engine North stopped operations the previous week. The 135 people who can keep working will come from Flint Engine North.
GM also saved eight jobs in Bay City with a more than $12 million investment into the Powertrain plant there, and 41 jobs escaped the chopping block at Defiance, Ohio.
Great news for all of these communities and their workers.
But these aren’t even callbacks — they’re notices to these employees that, “You don’t have to leave.”
Hey, in this economy, we’ll take even that.
But for the rest of the Flint area, for the entire state of Michigan, a future of new jobs, of many more jobs, lies in exploring many new industries.
That’s what is on the other side of our area’s and our state’s journey away from our addiction to the auto industry.
There’s much to be done, however, despite all the talk in the past decade about the need to build new economic sectors in Michigan.
University of Michigan economists George Fulton, Joan Crary and Don Grimes in their latest forecast for our state said that innovation here isn’t what it was 30 years ago.
Patents awarded in Michigan fell from 5.7 percent of all U.S. patents issued in 1980 to 3.9 percent.
Patents, often products of research and development, can be an indication of the inventiveness occurring here, the economists said.
What the numbers show for Michigan is it isn’t happening so much here as it used to. Nevertheless, our state is still a leader in automotive patents, taking home 35.7 percent of all issued in 2008.
What does that say for Michigan’s future?
We see it right here in Flint. Workers at Flint Engine Operations, which is responsible for saving these latest jobs, will build the new Ecotec 1.4-liter engine to power up the Volt and drive the Chevrolet Cruze models.
Innovations in the auto industry these days equal no jobs lost — at least fewer jobs out the door.
In the face of chronic, double-digit unemployment statewide, merely holding ground isn’t good enough. At that rate, Michigan will never claw its way back to prosperity.
The U-M economists said almost as much in their recent forecast. Even GM and Ford Motor Co. profits — with Chrysler Corp. still hanging in there — won’t create enough economic activity in the next two years to push Michigan unemployment from the 12.8 percent it was in October and into the single digits.
Not losing more auto industry jobs, as shown in GM’s recent announcement, may be the best that Michiganders can hope for from the auto industry into the near future.
Our new jobs, then, must be built upon new industries and new ideas.
Innovation must be the byword for everybody.
That includes new ways of thinking about jobs and industry.
Let’s have no more of the appalling indecision such as we saw this fall on the Genesee County Board of Commissioners over a proposal to make the entire Great Lakes Technology Center a property tax-free Renaissance Zone. The tax break, eventually granted, helps ensure the future of a 120-job, $18-million expansion of Insight Institute of Neurosurgery & Neuroscience. These will be new jobs, good jobs, in a new economic sector.
We’ve all heard, ad nauseum, that good jobs now require more than just a high school education. Expect more of that drumbeat, until everybody gets it, and gets a higher education.
On Tuesday, GM announced it will hire 1,000 new engineers to research automotive battery technology, most of them in Warren. Those new jobs require highly educated people — the wave of the future. Still, they are a far cry from replacing the 30,000 workers who used to flood the gates of Buick City alone back in the day.
It’s clear that the auto industry aims to stay in Michigan, and stay strong.
But it won’t be the single industrial dynamo that will empower Michigan’s economy yet again.
For that, Michigan business must create jobs in many sectors.
Our economy still must diversify or die. |
|
|
Sun Dec 05, 2010 8:59 am |
|
|
Dave Starr
F L I N T O I D
|
| Several years ago, I was told by a GM exec. that GM would be pulling out of Flint, partly because of the work ethic here and the schools not providing the level of education needed for the factories of the future. Looks like he was on target with what he said. |
_________________
I used to care, but I take a pill for that now.
Pushing buttons sure can be fun.
When a lion wants to go somewhere, he doesn’t worry about how many hyenas are in the way.
Paddle faster, I hear banjos. |
|
|
Sun Dec 05, 2010 11:06 am |
|
|
1pissedoffguy
F L I N T O I D
|
| GM was looking for a way out of Flint since the inception of the UAW. I had an uncle who always said that GM was thinking of ways to get back at the people for creating the unions , he was so right. However I think that while the unions for factory workers did some necessary things they went too far later. And the whole country's educational standards have went in a downward spiral ever since the creation of the Department of Education , a thank you gift from Jimmy Carter to the National Education Association for their support of him. So they went and created all the standards a teacher would be held to, a union , setting the standards for what their members would be held accountable for. Not good. Then we have the general attitude of the people of Flint that I personally witnessed, people not caring if their kids dropped out school because they thought the factories would always be there . Then GM's decision makers, making the totally wrong choices for what products they would offer. This was not in the hands of the workers in the unions, it was not made by the unions themselves. All the players had a hand in taking a very productive and lucrative business and sending it crashing into ground like a plane shot down from the air. I was there, I saw it all, and I can say, quite honestly, there were few victims, only ignorant and unaware volunteers. |
|
|
|
Sun Dec 12, 2010 8:32 pm |
|
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Register
Profile
FlintTalk.com Forum Index
> Political Talk
