Manufacturers answer to Walker's Job Training, Drug Testing, Minimum Hours Labor Scam? Automation Push!

There’s nothing wrong with automation. It’s inevitable. Which is why so many economists are kicking around the idea of a “basic income” for the possible under and unemployed labor force of the future. No one is sure what the tech and information economy will bring, or how many good paying jobs will be created, so a backup program like a “basic income” is getting some attention now. 

Which makes Scott Walker's plan; drug testing/minimum hourly requirement/job training such a blatantly cruel scam and business knows it.

Check out what's really going on behind the scenes and just how seriously business is taking Walker's "reforms:" 

A concerted effort to boost manufacturing productivity in Wisconsin is gaining momentum … The Transformational Productivity Initiative (TPI) consists of a diagnostic assessment and strategy implementation … to boost their productivity, in large part, because of ongoing labor pool issues.

Job Training, or Dropping People from Food Stamps and Health Care? It’s a way to dump Wisconsinites from safety net programs, saving money that Republicans can hand out to keep companies in our state, real "free market-like."

While we know the malarkey over the “skills gap” was a business con to import cheap foreign labor, it’s now morphing into an corporate image saving conversions to automation. Nice to know Walker’s effort to job train isn’t being taken seriously by big business in Wisconsin. So how do manufacturers see us, family supporting real human beings?

Kelly Armstrong, director of sector strategy development for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (said) “TPI is a long-term solution, and being more productive and efficient is part of the solution to the talent gap, the body gap and the skills gap,”

Randy Bertram, director of sustainability and operational excellence at the Wisconsin Manufacturing Extension Partnership, said “There are workforce issues that aren’t going to change any time soon and this will at least partially offset a decline in workforce participation. Companies are making fairly significant investments in automation technology.” Productivity depends in part on the efficiency of workers, but a larger influence is technological advancement.

With Industry 4.0, also called the fourth industrial revolution, companies are utilizing sensors and “smart” machinery to make their manufacturing processes ever more efficient ... TPI is working with Wisconsin manufacturers to implement the groundbreaking productivity-boosting practices. 

Productivity Flat in Walker's Wisconsin, who knew: And the truth continues to dribble out:

“Productivity equals prosperity,” said Lee Swindall, vice president of sector strategy development with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC). “But we’ve been literally flat in manufacturing productivity since 2004. I was flummoxed. We have a major productivity problem.”

Despite wage growth being almost nonexistent in Wisconsin, we're being told...

What’s more, the combination of rising real wages and declining productivity is a recipe for inflation.

Disney proves trained workforce not the point. Businesses want H-1B visas and cheap imported labor, not job skills.

While republican politicians brag about training the unemployed and cutting off their food stamps and UC benefits, they're also cutting this well trained work force for cheap imported labor.

Would I kid you?

On the federal end of the GOP agenda is the ever present effort to import cheap labor, making some of this "job training" stuff worthless, by increasing the number of H-1B visas:

NY Times: About 250 Disney employees were told in late October that they would be laid off. Many of their jobs were transferred to immigrants on temporary visas for highly skilled technical workers, who were brought in by an outsourcing firm based in India. Over the next three months, some Disney employees were required to train their replacements to do the jobs they had lost.

“I just couldn’t believe they could fly people in to sit at our desks and take over our jobs exactly,” said one former worker, an American in his 40s who remains unemployed since his last day at Disney on Jan. 30. “It was so humiliating to train somebody else to take over your job. I still can’t grasp it.”

Here's where the story is wrong, treating this like a "new" problem. If you look under my blog tab "Video History: failed Republican Policy" you'll find archived videos from 2003-2005 examining the same issues. Here's just one example:

It's not just at Disney:

But the layoffs at Disney and at other companies, including the Southern California Edison power utility, are raising new questions about how businesses and outsourcing companies are using the temporary visas, known as H-1B, to place immigrants in technology jobs in the United States. 

According to federal guidelines, the visas are intended for foreigners with advanced science or computer skills to fill discrete positions when American workers with those skills cannot be found. Their use, the guidelines say, should not “adversely affect the wages and working conditions” of Americans. Because of legal loopholes, however, in practice, companies do not have to recruit American workers first or guarantee that Americans will not be displaced.