As marchers stepped off Monday at Zion’s 71st Jubilee Days parade — the largest Labor Day parade in the state — some members of floats sponsored by area unions may have remarked how this year has been good for workers. For organized labor, it has been one of the best in years.
With campaign funding from unions, last fall the U.S. House returned to the Democrat side; Illinois elected a Democrat governor quite friendly to labor; the General Assembly is solidly Democrat, as are all statewide offices; the long-sought jump in the minimum wage to $15 in the Land of Lincoln became a reality. Labor is primed for next year’s election cycle and more political gains.
But before they get too comfortable, unionists may want to view the award-winning documentary “American Factory,” currently streaming on Netflix. It doesn’t predict a rosy future for U.S. production workers.
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when good-paying union jobs were lost as factories in the Rust Belt closed seemingly overnight, the labor movement has been decimated. Throughout Lake County, union shops were once plentiful.
Waukegan’s lakefront alone was home to Johns Manville, Outboard Marine Corporation, Johnson Outboards, U.S. Steel and Fansteel, all represented by unions. All are now razed relics of the city’s industrial legacy.
The same happened in Dayton, Ohio, where “American Factory” plays out, except it took longer. In 2008, a General Motors truck factory called it quits, leaving about 2,000 Ohioans out of work.
In 2015, China-based Fuyao Glass Industry Group retrofitted the vacant factory to make glass — windshields, side and rear windows — for U.S. and foreign automakers. The company hired a lot of the former GM employees at a beginning wage of $14 an hour. They had been making $29 an hour as members of the United Autoworkers Union.
Needless to say, a clash of cultures begins. At one point, Fuyao founder and Chairman Cho Tak Wong notes, “The point of living is to work,” quite opposite of the American ideal. A Chinese plant manager says U.S. workers need to “work harder, work longer.”
The work ethic of U.S. workers, Chinese managers tell their Chinese employees, is “casual,” and “we’re better than them.” He also says Americans are overconfident and need to continually be praised for their work.
As the company pushes to increase production, American managers are replaced with Chinese supervisors; the U.S. workers complain of safety hazards and low pay; the UAW tries to organize the plant. Since 2018, the film tells us the factory has been operating at a profit with many of the union organizers losing their jobs.
But what should be worrisome to labor and the future of the workplace is what happens in “American Factory” just before the credits begin to roll. The plant’s Chinese supervisors point with pride to the number of jobs they have or will be eliminating with what they term “machine work” because “automation means standardization.”
Indeed, the film tells us at its end that by 2030, 375 million people worldwide will need to find new jobs because of automation, artificial intelligence and the increasing introduction of robotic elements into the global workplace.
Automation is not only making jobs scarce on factory floors. Walmart is scheduled to deploy hundreds of floor-scrubbing robot janitors, like an autonomous mini-Zamboni or Roomba, in some of its stores this year. Faced with $15-an-hour wages in the fast-food industry, restaurants are introducing self-serve kiosks, digital menu screens and apps for ordering.
It’s an increasingly brave new world in the workplace, one of rapid change driven by innovative technology. There’s no room for Luddites in the future, or perhaps unions.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
