# Problems making changes at work

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-making-changes-at-work/715187>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [March 17, 2015, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-making-changes-at-work/715187 "2015-03-17T11:37:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2015, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-making-changes-at-work/715187/41 "2015-03-27T04:33:22Z")

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> [@Dangerosa](#):
>
> I’ve been involved in that decision. You want to know how it plays out?
> 
> “We need to lower costs or we won’t be able to sell our product at a competitive price. If we can’t sell our product at a competitive price, everyone here will be out of work. We have a choice, we can move our production lines overseas because our biggest factor in cost of good sold that is controllable is labor - or we can wait until we have to lay off the engineers, accountants, marketers, logistics people, and ourselves in three years when we declare bankruptcy. Gentlemen (it is almost always gentlemen), what would you like to do?”
> 
> Its more complex than that - they spend months gathering data, reviewing numbers and trying to make sure this is the best decision for long term viability. But when consumers use cost as a major differentiator - and for most things they do - there will always be a drive to lower costs.

Well its hard to believe that a company cannot do something like more automation or adjusting the product line to find a way to keep production in the US. It seems to me that often quality goes down and shipping costs rise when it’s made in China.

Unless of course the reason to move production overseas is to give the CEO a bigger paycheck.

Or granted, if this was a union shop the company might have just gotten so tired of dealing with American labor issues.

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**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\
**Post date:** [March 27, 2015, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problems-making-changes-at-work/715187/42 "2015-03-27T12:06:32Z")

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> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> Well its hard to believe that a company cannot do something like more automation or adjusting the product line to find a way to keep production in the US. It seems to me that often quality goes down and shipping costs rise when it’s made in China.
> 
> Unless of course the reason to move production overseas is to give the CEO a bigger paycheck.
> 
> Or granted, if this was a union shop the company might have just gotten so tired of dealing with American labor issues.

When the line cannot be automated without INCREDIBLE costs or can’t be extensively automated at all, as our lines couldn’t be, then it is believable. And when your parts are coming from China and your customers are in China because you are making parts for something else, then the shipping costs go DOWN.

iPhones, for instance, take a lot of hand work to assemble. And the iPhone market overseas and in Europe is as large as it is in the U.S. There is no reason to manufacture here.

This is exactly what msmith is talking about with “the big picture”

And that was exactly my involvement in these decisions - many years ago for a different company. The amount of effort and analysis that goes into these decisions (moving jobs overseas has incredible up front costs, you’d BETTER really be saving enough money to justify it) is pretty robust.

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