What Happened to the Great American Job?

By Terry Golway

 The other day I took a lunch-hour stroll around the parking lot near my office at Kean University in Union Township. Since I’m in the car market these days, I took notice of the various models and brands in the lot. I then counted the number of cars I passed – 32 – and the number of cars made by U.S.-based car companies --two.

 If you want to know why the Occupy Wall Street movement is making headway, keep that figure in mind.

 If you’re younger than 40, you’re probably wondering why anybody would even notice the dearth of cars made by U.S. companies. Young Americans today take for granted the primacy of Japanese and South Korean car companies

 You’re also wondering what the dearth of Fords and Chevys in a parking lot has to do with a protest in downtown Manhattan.

 Let me explain: First of all, if we could be transported to another time – let’s say 1975 – the Kean University parking lot would look very different. You might see a smattering of Toyotas, and if you saw a Honda product, chances are it was a motorcycle. Back then, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler ruled the global auto marketplace, and Americans with a high school education, or less, could aspire to well-paying blue-collar jobs in the American automobile industry. Young people in New Jersey found jobs in places like the Ford plan in Edison, or the GM plant in Linden.

 Today, the U.S. car companies have shed hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs. Other industries, like steel, have virtually disappeared from the economic landscape. American manufacturing as a whole lost six million jobs between 1970 and 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 Where are those jobs? For the most part, overseas. Why? Because corporations decided that American workers made too much money. And so the old industrial states in the north and Midwest were gutted. The Edison and Linden plants are long gone..

 What’s astonishing is that the destruction of the great American job unfolded without a great deal of public dissent. Both political parties are to blame -- corporate interests bought the support of Democrats and Republicans alike beginning in the late 1970s, precisely when the great American job began to disappear.

Now, however, there does appear to be a backlash in the making. Protesters are voicing their anger and frustration with the seemingly ruthless priorities of corporate America. Highly paid executives are rewarded for moving American jobs overseas rather than for finding new and creative ways of turning a profit while treasuring the labor force as a resource rather than a burden.

Many of the alternatives and ideals expressed in Zuccotti Park may be unrealistic and unworkable. Still, it is hard not to hear in the chants of students with no job prospects and crushing debt the voice of justified anger. They were told that they were doing the right thing, that the economy would reward their dedication and discipline. And then everything changed, even as banks, financial institutions and some corporations recovered from the catastrophes of 2008 and began turning profits again.

Even for trained college grads, the era of the great American job seems to be over – hopefully, it only seems that way. Many of the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park played by the rules, did the right thing. For their reward, they inherited one of the worst economies in the last 100 years.

They have every right to be angry.