Caterpillar: Iron mine no guarantee of those "thousands" of jobs Walker talks about

From Mike Wiggins, Chairman of the Bad River Band

From WisBusiness.com …
-- A proposed iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin is unlikely to directly create jobs at Caterpillar Global Mining near Milwaukee, and even if it did, those workers would likely come from out of state, a company executive said today.

John Disharoon, vice president of industry relations for Caterpillar, told the Milwaukee Rotary Club that mining is a vital industry that produces the minerals and fuels needed for the world's rapidly growing and increasingly urbanized population. That means the Caterpillar products being made right now in Wisconsin are destined to be exported.

"More than half of our sales are outside the United States," said Disharoon.

What tends to be imported by Caterpillar, however, is workers.

Wisconsin simply doesn't have enough workers with the right skills, said Disharoon. He said local technical colleges aren't teaching robotic forms of welding and other advanced skills.

"Most of the people that we get in our skilled trade shop come from someplace else," he said. "We're a very high-tech engineering firm. The welding that you will do in South Milwaukee for us at Caterpillar, you can't come out of a two-year welding program and walk right out in the shop. We have to train you on our tools and our processes."

Disharoon told WisBusiness.com afterward that it's impossible to predict if the proposed Gogebic Taconite mine would mean new welding jobs at Caterpillar's Wisconsin plants, which employ about 2,000 people, mostly in Oak Creek and South Milwaukee.

"Mines open and close every week," he said. "If this mine opens up and is permitted in Wisconsin, one is probably going to shut down in Brazil. We don't add production lines based on a mine opening or closing; we just try to serve the industry as a whole. As early as it is in this process, not having seen an equipment order out there, it's very tough for anybody to say how many jobs are going to be created -- sustained jobs -- if the order is placed and CAT wins the business."

Are Robots Killing Job Growth? (60 Minutes Segment & Comments)

Daymon's intro comment resonates with the permanently under-employables...

Story link at bottom, below Daymon's comments. Besides being active in Occupy Detroit, Daymon is a frequent contributor to the radical newspaper People's Tribune.
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RT Daymon J. Hartley, Occupy Detroit

Finally some of them are starting to get it.....this is the root cause of the global crisis....laborless production that is replacing both manual and mental labor as we know it.

Our present capitalist economic, social and political system is a victim of its own success. With the robotic and electronic revolution well under way we are replacing manual/mental labor as we know it.
And that is not a bad thing. We are producing untold abundance. If we can get machines to do the back breaking work in the factories, mines etc. then that should be a plus for humanity. But unfortunately they haven't figured out how to get the robots to buy back what they produce. And with a system still based on the premise that you have to have a job to earn a wage to buy the necessaries of life and there are no jobs....you have an irreconcilable contradiction. The profits and market system can no longer function to meet the needs of the majority of society.

With Globalization there is an evening up process with the spread of the technology. And rather then bringing the rest of the world's workers up to the living standard we have enjoyed...our standard of living is being driven down to theirs. Every economic system has its own objective motion and laws. The 1% have no control over this system as it implodes.

Democracy in this country has been reduced to merely casting a vote. Every 4 years they let us decide which of their leaders is going to mislead us for another 4 years. To enjoy the fruits of democracy the average person would have to have access to the tools of democracy. Television, print, radio. The only folks who have that access are the millionaires and billionaires. Dr. Martin Luther King was right in demanding economic democracy.

The democratic right to a job, house, food, healthcare and that elusive right to human happiness. You can call it socialism, communism, or a duck. Bring it on!

Are robots hurting job growth?

www.cbsnews.com

Technological advances, especially robotics, are revolutionizing the workplace, but not necessarily creating jobs. Steve Kroft reports.