The Freightliner Cascadia
Freightliner Trucks have been produced in the Portland area since 1947. So when I heard that the company would be naming their latest truck model the “Cascadia” I was thinking about just how appropriate that was. A great new model of truck, named after the great region where it is produced. This recently came back to my attention when I happened across a promotional website for the company for advertising the model of vehicle. Cool site, but perhaps only if you are in the trucking business.
Anyway, I remember thinking what irony it was that, just after the “Cascadia” was introduced, the company’s parent, Daimler of Stuttgart Germany, had decided to close the Portland plant and move production to a newly-built Freightliner plant in Mexico. Worse, this decision was made before the depth of the current recession became apparent.
Sure, a few months later, the company may have come to the same decision anyway. Sure, they are going to find cheaper labor in a foreign country than they do here in Cascadia. And I can’t help thinking that if this same situation had happened in Germany, the stricter labor laws there would have required Daimler to provide substantial benefits to the displaced workers, probably discouraging them from closing the plant in the first place. But that is there, and this is the USA. We will not only endure the loss of 2200 jobs directly provided by Freightliner, we also have the loss of jobs from suppliers of parts and services throughout the area.
“Extremely disappointing,” Mayor Tom Potter said. “Freightliner has been an important part of the fabric of our community for generations, and we deeply regret the loss of so many family-wage jobs.” Mayor-elect Sam Adams called the news “a punch to our economic gut.” I agree that this does not bode well for our local economy. So forgive me if I cannot get too excited over their latest trucks anymore.
This also says something about attempts by our government to “bail out” the major US auto companies by throwing cash at them. There is undoubtedly a benefit to preserve jobs and facilities of American workers ,both for economic reasons and for antional security reasons. It gets further complicated when you realize how many “foreign” vehicles are built in the US. But then you realize that nono of that money will go to help preserve jobs in Cascadia. yeah, the program was not designed to bail out everyone and their jobs. But it does highlight some inequities in the system.
We live in a world economy, and there will be no stopping the fact that jobs will migrate to the places that are most profitable for the companies involved. In that sense, none of our jobs are truly safe. So until we focus on what it takes to make ourselves competitive rather than try to prop up the old economy, we are doomed to fail.
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