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Comment by Lammy | Hacker News Reader

America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common: a large black population that originally migrated there in the 20th century for industrial jobs that largely no longer exist. Think Detroit with the auto industry. Camden NJ with New York Ship, Victor, and Campbell's Soup. Gary Indiana with US Steel, etc etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Works

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Migration_(African_Ameri...

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> America's "Rust Belt" cities all tend to have one thing in common

Not anti union, but these also had high union activity, which some explain as a cause of their 'rustification' as companies moved production elsewhere (like Alabama) to avoid.

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Negro_Labor_Council

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Negro_Labor_Congress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Revolutionary_Black_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Revolutionary_Union_Move...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_Black_Trade_Union...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Brotherhood_of_Worker...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Sleeping_Car_Po... (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_Commission_v._Pullman.... )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Association_of_R...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Actors_Guild_of_America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negro_Labor_Committee

HN should reformat wiki links to jump straight to the page title, since these long lists render identically before you open the thread.

Not sure what point you are making here. Most of these seem to be segregated unions for AA people that existed in the same places as the corresponding non-AA union run by the same overarching organization (e.g. AFL-CIO, etc).

Not even Alabama but overseas where not only is there no union, but companies can get away with paying starvation wages to effective slaves. How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them.

One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it. Otherwise it is just a race to the bottom.

> How an American is going to compete with a guy willing to work for $0.50/day on an 18 hour shift 7 days a week is a mystery. He doesn't even ask for healthcare, and when he dies of exhaustion there are hundreds more waiting to take his place because that's a huge amount of money for them.

Well, that guy would do a really bad job, especially after he dies. You can compete with him by staying healthy and being much more productive.

That's not an accurate description of overseas labor though, those people are skilled at what they do and their PPP-adjusted pay is better than that. (Sometimes overseas developers aren't skilled at enterprise development, in that case their skill is scamming the outsourcing manager.)

> One of the few things I think Trump got right is when he brought tariffs back. If you want companies to keep jobs in the US you have to make the labor cost just as much no matter where you find it.

That's not what a tariff does, a tariff makes foreign companies' products more expensive for domestic customers. It's just a pointless tax increase. And when the other country fights back it makes your products more expensive for foreign customers, hurting you.

Keeping jobs domestically means doing the opposite, increasing foreign customers for your stuff. This falls under industrial policy and it's what the overseas countries taking your jobs did better than us.

I mean it depends on the job... you are not going to outcompete textile workers in South or Southeast Asia.

The thing about Trump's tariffs is the rhetoric didn't match the way it was actually used (to the extent there was a strategy at all, it seemed like moving production from China to other low-wage countries was a bigger priority than protecting pay and working conditions in the US).

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