America, Productivity and International Labour - Dream Merchant

If there were dreams to sell,

Merry and sad to tell,

And the crier rung his bell,

What would you buy?

Thomas Lovell, Beddoes, Dream-Pedlary

Irony of ironies, I have been busy working. So much so that I barely have time to sit down as I usually do and plumb through of the past, present and future and thus thump out article after article. I now work at Amazing PC Ltd. as a PC Repair Technician, after a eagle-eyed store Manager in May Pen caught sight of my blog, My Thoughts on Technology and Jamaica, and offered my a job.

My thoughts are thus cast on Americans and their loss of low paying, menial jobs to make low end products such as electronics and gadgets to the People’s Republic of China. Yet, they still retain the production leadership of the world, with high value precision engineered products such as health care products, weaponry and aircraft as stated in the article “Despite china's might, US factories maintain edge”, published Monday January 31 2011 by PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer, Yahoo! News.

Out of work since December 3^rd 2009 after being fired since my girlfriend Audia Granston had died from cervical Cancer as stated in my blog article entitled “Audia Granston, Jack Abramoff and the Culture of Innovation and the spirit of Creativity in Jamaica”, my tribute article to her.

I had been hanging out at the Amazing PC Ltd. branch in Bargain Village, from where I update, and edit before posting my long winded ditties on my blog. I did the interview at Amazing PC headquarters, located at Hagley Park back on November Friday 5^th 2011, around the same time I wrote my blog article entitled “LIME vs Digicel - The Truth About Charlie”.

I failed to get the job, being as I am a Telecom Technician, not IT, as in our field we don’t fix electronics; we mere troubleshoot, spot ‘em, tag ‘em an bag ‘em and replace cards to get the system back online. Trifling simple work, the work of a Telecoms Technician! Most of our knowledge being keyed up in manuals specific for each type of equipment, so if you dislike reading, you will be forever stuck getting advice from other workers!

It was however after I was asked by Neisha, the Manager of Amazing PC Ltd. to suggest ways to increase sales at the Branch without discounts that I wrote a proposal which I sent in to Amazing PC Ltd. Hence the callback in 2011!

Not only did I get a callback in January 2011, folks, but in the same week of the interview another company, JNAP (Jamaica Network Access Point) a contractor for Telecom Provider CLARO, also called me for an interview as a Maintenance Engineer. JNAP was a company I had prior written and designed their maintenance program using spreadsheets back in 2009.

Thus, this enabled JNAP to get the maintenance contracts for nearly a third of the six hundred and twelve cells (612) that Telecom Provider CLARO owns. JNAP has also gotten more contracts from other Telecom Providers, but as the nature of these contracts is classified, I cannot divulge details.

This, folks, was the same Telecom Provider CLARO trying to block me after firing me back in December 3^rd 2009  claiming that I was sharing information with Telecom Provider Digicel. Ironic, as Telecom Provider Digicel and their show Digicel Rising Stars, was my idea………along with all of its offspring in terms of reality shows on Television Jamaica, being as my phone numbers above are all old company numbers being monitored.

Even more interesting, I was a RF Technician, thus I constantly have to be sharing info with Telecom Provider Digicel, with whom we share tower space on some sites that we co-locate on. Now re-employed, this whole fiasco highlights the silliness of Management as it relates to secrecy of information in this post-email and post-Social Networking era. 

How this all relates to the Americans? I am a skilled worker, with training specific to Telecoms. However, I had other skills too, which I had been using since I was much younger an how I had been getting employment at places as diverse as C&W (2001 to 2004), Mother’s Enterprises Ltd, a food retailer at which I had worked as a Network Administrator (July 2004 to November 2004) and Telecom Provider CLARO (2008 to December 2009) where I worked as a Radio Frequency Technicians, with an emphasis on Generator Maintenance.

As in Jamaica, Skilled workers will continue to be employed, as the days of menial jobs are numbered, all being lost to the People’s Republic of China and immigrant labour from Latin and Central America, the usual scape goat for America’s problems.

This despite American efforts to block immigrants from gaining citizenship in the US of A as stated in my blog article entitled “American Economy and Immigration - A Day Without a Mexican”, as with a continuously ageing population, immigrant labour to be in any way competitive with China is inevitable.

Natural Gas merely makes inputs cheaper for manufacturing as per my blog article entitled “Hydrogen Economy and Natural Gas - Wall-E and the Rise of Oceanospirillales Microbes”. Not to mention ride out the effects of the coming of the Second Recession due to Peak Oil in 2015!

American worries over being competitive with China, therefore, is nothing more than a complaint by middle -Americans over the loss of low-paying easy jobs for jobs that require higher levels of skill and training. This is a sure fire indication of spoilt American people, a Developed Country, who live in a country with so many vocational institutions, yet showing a dislike for skills training or Blue collar work as the Americans are wont to call it, which they have to be sourcing from Developing countries such as Jamaica.

Thus an expansion Internationally is on the cards in order to increase employment for Americans and create businesses opportunities, the same spirit of entrepreneurship required in Jamaica, as I had predicted in my blog article entitled “JDX and PayLess - First Dove of a Coming Recovery”. We are now people on the move, in this age of The Dream Merchants (TV 1980)!