Manufacturing Industry in Australia
The question that is being studied here is of unemployment, and this is clearly not being lost because of imports. The calculations have been made by the Australian Center for Industrial Relations Research and Teaching, and they say facts about the net changes in the rate of employment between 1988 and 1998 in a number of industrial sectors. It can be seen that there is a clear decline in employment in eight sectors of industry during this decade. There was a net loss of about 250,000 jobs and more than sixty percent of the loss was in areas where there was no competition. This concerned employers like Commonwealth Bank, SECV, State Rail NSW, AMP, and the federal public services. (Do imports cost jobs: What's wrong with fair trade?) Compared to this, the total number of people employed in sector of textiles, clothing and footwear manufacture in Australia has been 80.2 thousand as per the figures available for 1998. (Manufacturing employment) The important areas of job loss have been in the manufacture of different products with low import threats, and where the imports come from high wage countries. The exception is in the case of textile, clothing and footwear -- TCF. In the case of these products, the imports are from medium wage countries and that import is 36.0% of the total market for these goods in Australia. The largest import is from China, and they are now selling 20% of all TCF goods in Australia. (Do imports cost jobs: What's wrong with fair trade?)
This has been confirmed at meetings of the productivity commission regarding the future of industry in the city of Melbourne and the state of Victoria. In the public hearing, they have also confirmed that if the recommendations of the commission are implemented then there would be another loss of 30,000 jobs. An industrialist, Brian Rush had this to say about the textile industry -- "Commodity sewing, as such, in Australia has a real struggle in front of it. Our all-up labor rates in Bendigo, with all the add-ons, are about $28 an hour. You go to China and it's less than 50 cents an hour." (Textile jobs under threat. 2003) It is not that the government is not aware of the situation in the country and has already allocated $575 million for the textile, clothing and footwear sector under the Strategic Investment Program as stated by the minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. His statement said "Australia's $9 billion textile, clothing and footwear manufacturing industries can now apply for investment and R& D. assistance under the package which has been closely and extensively negotiated with industry players." (Australia: Textile, clothing & footwear sector investments worth AU $575mn approved, 2005)
But this does not seem to have helped the workers as in one case, the workers sacked by National Textiles on January 21st are still on a 24-hour picket outside their factory and that is located about 170 kilometers north of Sydney. There are 342 workers and the claimed dues are on account of entitlements which are not paid consisting of leave on a yearly basis, sick leave, long service, redundancy payments and superannuation. (Sacked Australian textile workers picket for $11 million in unpaid entitlements) Regarding TCF, the economists at Reserve Bank have stated that about one third of the jobs lost in clothing are due to low wages and that is a total of 28,000 jobs. For footwear this amounts to 6,000 jobs lost. Well this seems to support that fair trade is the main reason for the lost jobs but they have also stated "Despite this large import effect, productivity improvements accounted for about two-thirds of the fall in employment in this sector" (Do imports cost jobs: What's wrong with fair trade?)
This can be seen from a comparison of the figures of 1994 and 1999 where in the case of machinery and equipment the productivity has risen by 23.2% and the job losses have been only 3.9% reduction. In the TCF sector, the increase in productivity has been 15.1% and the job losses are 15.3%. (Do imports cost jobs: What's wrong with fair trade?) When one looks at the total employment figures the picture becomes even clearer with a reduction between 1974 and 1999 with a total reduction in textiles clothing and footwear by 53%, whereas in transport equipment and machinery the reduction was by 39% and in metallic products by 29%. Thus it is clear that employment is on the way down...
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