We are not known for a strong education system, a strong economy, or even an extremely skilled workforce. But, what happened yesterday was extremely beneficial to our future.
Trouble, is, there's way too much self-congratulation going on among the state's Republican classes, and too little discussion of OK, what's next? Boeing's been looking South for a decade. Was SC all that clever to snag them, or was it just a case of how even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while?
Waldo has argued- at length- here, here, here, here, and here, to cite a few instances- that South Carolina's leadership class is still thinking in terms of 1950s, southern, economic development strategies: factory jobs, not knowledge workers.
Take away the heat, all the union-bashing or management second-guessing as Boeing now appears ready to move a major piece of its plane-building operations to South Carolina. At the core of this breakup drama is a cold statistic: 14.
As in $14. Per hour.
That’s the average pay of the local line workers who are building the fuselage of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner in a Charleston, S.C., plant.
Average pay of a Boeing Machinist around here? $28 an hour. Now, these pay averages aren’t directly comparable, say people in the know. Many of Boeing’s workers in South Carolina are younger or less experienced (the plant is only 4 years old). So the average pay there tilts lower.
Still, the average pay at Costco stores around Seattle is $17 an hour. According to PayScale, a Seattle company that tracks wages, the average for a hairstylist in Seattle is $18.24 an hour.
So Boeing right now is paying less to build airplanes in South Carolina than we pay for cutting hair or shelving 3-pound jars of olives.
How can we compete with that?
South Carolina's leadership class ought to be embarrassed they didn't land the $26 an hour jobs at Boeing, not cheering themselves on for landing the $14 ones. They ought to be embarrassed to have been willing to pressgang South Carolina taxpayers to cough up hundreds of millions in subsidies to bribe Boeing to come to South Carolina.
There's no question the Boeing jobs- even at the rate of 500 or so a year for two thirds of the next decade- will benefit the Low Country. But they still represent the last-century view that what SC needs is jobs for people who get paid a lot to bolt things together. The Vought plant Boeing bought in Charleston it bought because the plant was incapable to meeting deadlines and contributed mightily to the two-year delay in the Dreamliner's debut. Their collaboration model having failed, Boeing took the plant over to try and whip it into shape. Why they think the same workforce pool can start cranking out $150 billion worth of planes in the next few years can only, from the outside, be attributed to cheap, pliant labor (the union at the Vought plant voted to ununionize) and a supine state government willing to bid against itself to get a trophy.
It's the same old, "spread your legs and pretend you're enjoying it" industrial strategy the South has been pimping for a century: we're So Grateful for whatever crumbs you toss us at the price of a ton of caviar in concessions.
As Waldo's noted before, SC is attracting low-tech jobs from high-tech companies. It doesn't take a lot of knowledge workers to keep the Google server farm running in Cayce, or to grind coffeee beans for Starbucks.
We are still missing out on the knowledge worker jobs that are replacing the formerly highly- and union-negotiated- wages of the last century bolting together cars. And airplanes.
The people in charge of economic development are missing the point entirely. They're still pitching a work force that can cheaply exceed minimal expectations. You see the same thing throughout the South: "We're not very bright, but we work hard, and we'll throw tax equity out the window in return for some trophy jobs that keep the people believing another BMW plant is more likely than winning the Powerball."
Smart jobs we're going to have to import, and for a long, long time. But the reason Waldo keeps harping on the research of scholars like Richard Florida and Gary Gates is that the idea people who fill the Really Smart Jobs- like up in the North Carolina Research Triangle- are, for the most part, not closeted racists, homophobic political opportunists, or legislators who need help finding two brain cells to rub together.
The campaign for bringing high tech jobs to South Carolina is not a 9 to 5 pitch. The people we want have to want to live here 24/7. They have to have tolerable neighbors, amenities reflecting an approximation of the places they turned down to come here, and a political culture that doesn't demonize anyone who's smart, nonwhite, nonstraight, or who has too many tattoos to suit a tobacco farmer in Bamberg.
Good one!
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