Republicans in Congress have been objecting to new infrastructure spending that would put Americans to work repairing and rebuilding bridges, highways, schools, airports, skyscrapers, high speed rail lines, and clean energy industries. Now we may know why.
San Francisco is getting a new bridge connecting to Oakland. But it’s not being built by American workers. It’s being built in China and shipped back to America for assembly. But that’s not the only infrastructure project being built by the Chinese, and it’s not just being built in China. It turns out, the state owned Chinese contractors are being hired out to build American infrastructure right here in the United States.
According to Engineering News Record, five of the world’s top 10 contractors, in terms of revenue, are now Chinese. One of them, China State Construction Engineering Group, has overtaken established American giants like Bechtel.
The Chinese contractor has already built seven schools in the US, apartment blocks in Washington DC and New York and is in the middle of building a 4,000-room casino in Atlantic City. In New York, it has won contracts to renovate the subway system, build a new metro platform near Yankee stadium, and refurbish the Alexander Hamilton Bridge over the Harlem river.
But why are we hiring contractors from China to build American infrastructure, when we have a perfectly good workforce here in the states? The answer is profit, and it’s the reason why Republican politicians and many corporations do not support infrastructure projects that would put millions of Americans to work. Because the Chinese contracting firms are government owned, they are able to bid for contracts at very low prices. In other words, the labor is cheap. American companies don’t want to hire Americans to do the work when they can call up Communist China to come do the work instead. This is particularly helpful to Republicans politicians because their campaigns receive the extra profits made by these companies. It’s a win-win. But it’s a loss to Americans who are desperate to find work.
Obviously, Republicans will say that all we need to do is end regulations and abolish the minimum wage to entice companies to start hiring Americans. But that’s pretty un-American if you ask me. What Republicans are saying is that if we want to beat China, we need to be just like them. That’s very hypocritical considering the rhetoric Republicans have been using to slam communism all the while praising the free market system. How exactly “free” is the free market when they hire the Chinese to do jobs that Americans should be doing? How are private enterprises “patriotic” when they favor Chinese workers over American workers? The reason America became the richest country in the world is because we made sure that Americans were paid livable wages and not pennies. We passed regulations to keep American workers safe on the job and American consumers safe at home. And private industry employed Americans, and made products in America. That is how America became an economical superpower. American companies would still make huge profits by hiring Americans at livable wages. They just don’t want to because they want to make disgustingly bigger profits. It’s all about the bottom line.
We shouldn’t be hiring Chinese contractors to build our infrastructure. We should build our schools. We should build our roads and bridges. We Should build our high speed rail lines. The fact is, by hiring such contractors, the American private sector is relying on a foreign government owned industry to do the work, all while they oppose the United States government getting involved in infrastructure programs that would create American jobs for American citizens. It’s time for the American government to take back what American corporations have been giving away to the Chinese for the last decade. And the only way to do that is to fire the Republican politicians who only represent the interests of corporations and replace them with politicians that want to create jobs for Americans. Because it is clear, that private industry will not hire Americans to do the work when they can hire slave labor do it instead. We cannot let that be the new American way.
Your thinking is seriously flawed!
http://www.abcnews.com
Try http://www.abcnews.com, that’s where I first learned of this Republican fiasco.
let’s not get off point here “cka2nd”, we have american workers that need jobs. There’s already an attempt by China to buy “Yahoo”. Ronald Reagan Started this Big Sellout with his globalization B.S., He sold out his own country. it’s been the intent of foreign countrys to bring our living standard down to their economic level for years.
I don’t really care if the owners are Chinese capitalists or American capitalists. American companies like Bechtel have played the “foreign” role in other countries for decades, and you better believe that American capitalists, just like their Chinese, Japanese, European, etc. counterparts, are still going around the world building infrastructure and buying, for a song, privatized public utilities and assets.
What I care about is whether the workers, foreign or American, are well paid, have good benefits, decent workplace rules, and the right to join a union. If I have a choice between a product made by unionized Korean, Japanese or German labor and non-union American labor, I’ll choose the union-made product 99% of the time.
Regarding the infrastructure work being done IN the U.S., as long as the workers doing the actual work are paid the same and have the same benefits and rights, I don’t care whether the company’s bosses are Chinese or American.
On the other hand, I think it is safe to assume that the workers doing the manufacturing in China are paid less and enjoy far fewer rights than workers who would be manufacturing the same goods in the U.S., so I would have no problem slapping a tariff on those goods equal to the difference in cost, and with a surcharge on top for the fact that China’s treatment of its working class is even sorrier than the U.S.’s post-Patco record.
1st non-union non American Chinaman touchs our work gets thrown in Frisco Bay
Try them for treason? In WHAT COURTS?
Hahahahahahah I can see it now, it goes all the way to the Supreme Court where Clarence Thomas (and his wife Ginny) write a smackdown opinion which says that protesting imported slave labor from Communist China is interference and an attempt to deny corporations their civil rights.
If this true why do I read about the Chinese and infrstructure here, instead of seeing it on 60 minutes or MSNBC or any news outlet on TV???!!! Can anyone explain why the MSM ignores this??
Are you being serious or facetious?
OK, now I know the republicans need to be tried for treason, it a national security issue for any other country to come here and build our infrastructure, what kind of fucking idiots are these people?
That depends. . . how many types of idiots are there? Ignorant? Mis-informed? Genetic? Brain damaged? Willful? Greedy? How many helps us to narrow down what types of idiots the GOP happen to be. . .
Garry, that was PRICELESS!! : D
Another aspect of this is the low quality of workmanship we will have in the finished, and thus overpriced, product.
The Chinese are not known for putting quality above profit, you know. Anything that can be made cheap, will be made to the lowest possible specs. This is worrisome. Our roads and bridges were originally built to last. With Chinese workmanship on these vital projects, we will be replacing them – AGAIN – in just a few years, at an even higher cost.