Opinion

Alan Lupo: Made in USA for foreign profit

By Alan Lupo
Published: May 19, 2008

Once upon a time, we Americans pretty much knew who ran what in this country.

You walked down the block to the corner variety store, and the guy behind the counter was the man in charge. Maybe he rented the place, but he did not answer to some chain-store headquarters in Kalamazoo.

Next door to his joint was the cobbler's. His boss was not in Sweden. He was the boss.

On and on it went down the street to the butcher, the clothing store man, the grocer, the druggist. There was a chain grocery too, but it was an exception, and the chain was American-owned.

It didn't stop there. Our cars were made in Michigan. Our clothing was manufactured in Massachusetts, New York, maybe the Carolinas, by Americans working for Americans. Our countrymen owned the factories that produced baseball bats and little red wagons.

But in this ever changing globalized world, we now wonder what America's place will be. The thought occurred to me again recently when I saw the story about how an Irish company, Greencore, had bought Home Made Brand Foods in Newburyport.

The new owners promised not only to keep the company's 195 workers, but also to expand operations and even add a few jobs.

It's not always good news when one company buys another, whether we are talking about domestic or foreign acquisitions.

The New York Times last month carried a story about two Michigan towns. In one, Siemens, a German industrial mega-corporation, purchased an old, failing factory and resuscitated it, to the benefit of local workers and the town's economy. In another community, a Swedish firm bought and shut down an Electrolux refrigerator plant and eliminated 2,700 jobs by sending production to Mexico.

The foreign purchases are like marriages; some are good, and workers benefit; some are lousy, and workers pay the price.

The trend is not going to cease, especially as a weak U.S. dollar entices more foreign companies to buy up American firms at affordable prices. The same Times story reported that more than five million Americans work for the affiliates of foreign companies.

Here in Massachusetts, more than 182,900 workers, or 6 percent of all Bay State employees, work for foreign-owned companies.

So when the Irish show up in Newburyport, they'll be joining ranks of their own countrymen, along with Japanese, British, Canadians, French, Belgians and Finns who run companies employing Massachusetts workers.

This is beginning to look like a peaceful version of the age of colonialism, except that businessmen in suits have replaced the conquistadors in armor.

Chinese and Indian firms compete to buy a South African telecommunications giant. Arab nations, along with China and Russia, cast their eyes here and there, seeking opportunities to invest sovereign wealth funds — that is, dough controlled by the nations themselves.

Properties are bought and sold, expanded or shut, depending on the private, closed-door discussions of entrepreneurs, tycoons and, in some cases, government officials, living in places much farther away than both that old corner variety store and Henry Ford's Michigan headquarters.

And as the descendants of Mr. Ford's assembly-line workers wonder what kind of security they and their families will have in the future, the Japanese-owned Toyota operation provides jobs for a new generation of auto workers in places like Huntington, West Virginia.

The United Auto Workers union says Toyota doesn't do enough for these workers. Some workers agree. Others say Toyota is the best thing that's ever happened to them and their community.

"At my previous job," one of them recently told the Huntington Herald Dispatch, "we got laid off all the time. Here you have your benefits, your insurance. You're guaranteed a job here pretty much. They have outside functions for Toyota members and their families ... It's really nice."

Now, the Irish promise to play nice in Newburyport.

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Alan Lupo, a veteran Boston columnist who appears regularly on these pages, can be reached at alupo@comcast.net