Showbiz work spectacular

Nicholas von Hoffman

President Reagan arrived for a visit in the western Pennsylvania area the other day where the unemployment rate is runn- ing around 17 per cent. This is a section of the country where he ran strongly in 1980, but the blue collar workers who were hooting Jimmy Carter three years ago were toting signs with diffferent messages this spring — 'Feed the hungry, not the Penta- gon', 'Jobs not bombs'.

A shop owner stood in front of his place of business with a placard for the Presiden- tial limousine reading, 'Thanks, Ron, business is off 50 per cent'. Those not showing signs chanted, 'Reagan, Reagan, he's no good. Send him back to Hollywood'. And indeed Hollywood has come up with its answer to unemployment. Recently Variety, the trade magazine of the entertainment industry, carried this ad for a new quiz programme: Help wanted — exciting real-life com- petition that pays off — in employment:

Qualified applicants compete. Everybody wins — and, right on the air, one wins the biggest prize of all: solid guaranteed employment. Popular host Michael Young introduces actual em- ployers ready to hire for a variety of jobs — from the conventional to the extraor- dinary. It's a unique half-hour that entertains, informs and involves viewers. And what jobs they are:

Cheer leader — Football team need talented outgoing cheer leader. Looking

for attractive girl who can pick up new moves quickly. Salary $30.

Dog Groomer — Pet care center hiring animal-loving groomer to enhance the look of our four-legged friends.

Bonbon Dipper — Oldest, best known candy chain needs bonbon dipper with the old-fashioned dedication that would make our founder proud. Sweet oppor- tunity for creative craftsman.

Reagan's answer to unemployment has been to point to the Help Wanted columns and say 'See, there is work.' If an unemployed steel worker really wants a job, he won't be proud. He'll apply for retrain- ing as a bonbon dipper or, if he has the legs for it, a cheer leader. If that fails, everybody is going to be retrained to go into electronics, which we are ceaselessly told is America's high tech future.

The Democrats are no less enthusiastic in offering electronic retraining as the way out for the unemployed. In fact, they were pushing the retraining line before the Presi- dent. Some of them have done it so long and so vociferously they have won themselves the nickname of 'Atari Democrats', so called after the largest of the electronic game companies. Mr Reagan and his companion Atari Democrats were kicked in their chops in February with the announcement that Atari was closing its assembly line in California and moving its manufacturing operations to Hong Kong and Taiwan at the cost of 1,700 more jobs lost.

The notion that sacked workers from the old red brick factories will find a clean future in transistors is either recklessness or fraud by those peddling the idea. No evidence exists that any sizable number of workers can make the transition to bonbon dipper or dog groomer, let alone computer programmer. Studies by Boston College of 654,000 Massachusetts mill workers laid off between 1957 and 1975 showed that only 18,000, or about three per cent, found work in high tech industries. The chances are that a laid-off worker, if he or she finds employ- ment at all, will find it in a low-paying field such as fast food or retail merchandising. When American manufacturers pull out and go abroad they invariably give as the reason that American labour costs too much to allow them to stay competitive. But in electronics, for instance, American manufacturers' labour costs are about two- thirds those of the Japanese who still undersell their American competitors. A re- cent study of manufacturing costs of 19-inch colour television sets made in the United States shows that Japanese sets manufactured here come in at between $10 and $31 less than American sets made here.

American workers must worry about what kind of an electronic future they have when they learn what has happened to the competitive position of American com- panies in 20 years. Twenty years ago the Japanese exported nil, zero, naught, no col- our television sets. In 1964 more than a million were manufactured here: the United States dominated the industry. Where once there were 27 American manufac- turers there are now but three of any conse- quence and they are not very American since they do their component and board assembly work in Mexico, Taiwan, Singapore and Ireland.

The failure of the American colour televi- sion industry to compete is a failure of management. American managers did not spend the money on developing the automated equipment which the Japanese did. As a result, as with automobiles, American TV sets began to get a crummy reputation. Japanese sets are more reliable, which has allowed Japanese companies to give one year warranties at virtually no cost: when the American manufacturers were forced to follow suit, it cost them millions. One study of the industry concluded: 'The US companies ultimately failed because they invested in lawsuits, offshore produc- tion bases and cosmetic features rather than in basic product design, process im- provements and export market develop- ment.'

The lawsuits and the lobbying have been done with the aim of getting the govern- ment to keep electronics of foreign manufacture out of the country. The government has obliged. There is a stiff tariff on imported colour TV tubes, and Japan has agreed to a 'voluntary' limitation on the number of sets it is exporting to the United States. Such single-nation agreements do little beside complicate things by giving the Japanese firms an in- centive to switch the place of manufacture out of Japan to some other Asian country.

But what help has been given to small electronics appliance manufacturers is nothing when stacked up against the help proffered to the American steel industry. It not only has benefited from a cobweb of protectionist restrictions on imports but has been all but immune from taxation for years so that it would have more money to sink into modernisation and new plant and equipment investment. The steel companies have taken this money and run. They have run out of the steel business, using these subventions and protections to buy oil com- panies and banking institutions. Only one new steel mill has been built in the United States in 30 years.

Last month the industry, under threat of closing plants and tossing workers out on the streets, got the union to agree to a pay cut. Within days the US Steel Corporation let it be known it was negotiating for im- ports from British Steel.

Unemployment is a greater calamity for American workers than it is for those in many other industrialised nations. Only 58 per cent of American workers are covered by any form of unemployment insurance. For many American workers medical in- surance stops when they are laid off: since

unemployment benefits average only half of a laid-off worker's income, prolonged unemployment makes it impossible to keep up with the house payments. When a worker's unemployment insurance runs out, which happens about a year after the lay-offs, workers must sell off most of any accumulated assets before they can be eligi- ble for the very stingy welfare allowance available to them.

A few days ago NBC built the plot of one of its cops shows around an unemployed automobile factory worker. The poor demented fellow could be heard shouting about wanting to work as he stalked from here to there with a bottle of nitroglycerine, looking for something to blow up.