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Space: The Last Frontier for Outsourcing
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Check out this video of workers at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center who talk about the thrill, responsibility and pride of playing important roles in the space shuttle missions.
The members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been part of the nation’s space program from its earliest days through the space shuttle program, which flies its final mission in September.
With the end of the shuttle program, some 7,000 workers, half the space center’s workforce, face layoffs Oct. 1. Yet the United States is outsourcing manned space flight to Russia, depending upon that country’s 40-year-old Soyuz spacecraft to reach the International Space Station.
Mary Ann Jackson, a field systems specialist at Kennedy Space Center and member of Local 2088, tells the Electrical Worker Online:
There are so many people affected by all this. It’s sad to think we might not have jobs soon and tough to deal with where our work is going.
Click here to read the IBEW’s in-depth look at the end of the space shuttle program and its impact on the workers who have been a vital part from lift off to touch down.
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6 Comments
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Who and when, was it ok to do business with COMMUNISTS. If you told my father or ever my grandparents that we would be sending most of the American work and jobs to COMMUNIST countries they would say “better off dead than RED”. Not anymore. CUNSUMERS WOULD RATHER PAY THE LOWEST PRISE AT ANY COST.
Why is it called the Kennedy space center anyway? For sure he was not COMMUNIST!
I totally agree pezz, and guess what, I’m someone who could be called socialist (NOT the same as communist.) And Russia is still a mob controlled/media controlled state. But “everythings fine” when it saves money and “The Markets” are okay with it:
-outsourcing
-planned obsolesence
-slave labor
If “the market” is fine with something where all fine with it.
And I’m getting very tired of the media calling China “populist.” It is not a populist country. And China was openly communist when Nixon open talks to it in the ’70s, What was the difference bettween China and Cuba? China had actually attacked our soldiers in Korea, while Cuba made alot of threats. China is a awful example of corporate lucifarianism run amuck, It’s what will happen to us if we keep worshiping “The Markets.” “Screw” the “fricken” markets!
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by tandmark: Space — the final frontier (of labor outsourcing!): http://bit.ly/5aGqWX...
Is nothing sacred anymore? What ever happened to “Made in America” I wonder how long it is going to take for the money mongers of Wall Street to realize that their beloved barometer, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will become a parity of itself because there won’t be any industry to drive it because they shipping it all over seas!
And just who is going to buy products from these outsourcing American companies if there are no workers left making an income. At the rate it is going America will be a third world nation in ten years.
I know what your saying (smallcastle & Bruce Miller) it seems so simple to us, but people keep buying the crap that the CATO institute or some other corporate mouthpeice has to say. Things like “the U.S. has the highest industrial output in the world”
Two things:
-1) Anybody buying electronics knows that’s bull.
-2) As much as it might as well be now, I’m not counting agriculture in industrial output. ONLY durable goods.
Personally I’m not even counting trash bags, saran wrap, aluminum foil or other throw away garbage.
-I know some very confused republicans who still agree with me on one very simple idea:
-Every single item that we get on import should have one USA made alternative. It should be made with the finest materials, and should match all the features of the other product, MP3 players and the chips and resistors in them or etc. THIS SHOULD BE LAW. And by the way I don’t mean final assembly, I mean 51% materials and labor in the USA, I know that’s beyond fair. Not only should we do this for the endless evidence of economic prosperity, but also for national security.
I’ve done extensive personal research online and found that if you have the money everything in your house can be U.S. made except your television and vaccum cleaner (unless you want one that’s janitorial quality that has a 20″ brush).
The problem is (ironicly) what we make here is extremely high end, especially in electronics, like a bluray disc player that costs around $8000. So the idiotic idea that good things are all made in japan or designed in japan clearly dosen’t make sense (although I’ll buy electronics made in japan well before I buy electronics made in china or mexico.)
Something else I’ve noticed: I’m 23, and I’m seeing the extreme decline in quality of products, like coffee makers made 90% of plastic (this happenig during the time that to mfrs. went china.) My father 43 says same thing, and his parents the same thing, all living during the U.S. manufacturing destruction so clearly the bile spewed by market worshiping rethuglicans and neoliberal coffeshop dems that “americans like foriegn products more is bull” they were forced into it plain and simple.
-I know I’m venting… so to stick with the topic, I’m not sure I trust the KGB with NASA secrets…how’s that.