VISE-GRIPS VS. RICE-GRIPS

[wolfy]

Since this is an old Nebraska product with a proud heritage that has been outsourced to China, I bring this article to the forum for your consideration ........


http://www.omaha.com/article/20120902/MONEY/709029991

[zammer]

Chinese slave labour will always be more attractive to corporations, its like turning the clock back to the early 1900's over here when men made next to nothing for toiling away in a factory............ .

As soon as the Chinese are tired of working for nothing in unsafe conditions, the corporations will move to the next 3rd world nation...the well paying factory jobs are gone forever...........a ll due to greed.

[Old Philosopher]

....the well paying factory jobs are gone forever...........a ll due to greed.

The article said the DeWitt workers were averaging $13.50/hr. That's pretty well paid for factory labor. My son recently had to move 350 miles from home to get $11.00/hr for production line work.

And "greed" is always a double edged sword. Was Vise-Grip in DeWitt a union shop? Did the original owners pay $13.50/hr voluntarily, or contractually?


 

He's glad to work as many hours as he can get. Most months, he earns about $420, including overtime.
In DeWitt, where the average wage was $13.50 an hour, monthly pay was more than five times as much ? not counting overtime.

I wonder what the landlords and banks are charging for rent and mortgages in Dewitt?
 
 

In Shenzhen, Xu bunks with six other men in a company dormitory room next to the factory. The rent is cheap ? 40 yuan per month, or about $6.50.

The problem of price competition with American products goes far beyond a Corporation's simple desire to increase their bottom line. American made cars probably wouldn't cost $40K if production workers weren't demanding $30/hr wages.
My 2-cents, anyway.

[Dano]

Sad to hear this about Vice Grip.  But remember what happened when Rubbermaid went up against Walmart- they tried to pitch their product at their price and Walmart responded that if they wanted to sell, it would be at THEIR price.  Next  thing you know, the shelves were stocked with Sterlite (sp?) products not Rubbermaid.  I believe that hit another smaller town in Ohio.

Ol P- have you seen the report on minimum wage? If it had remained proportionate, it would be in the $23 per hour range today.  Wages aren't nearly the percentage of cash flow of business monies like they were in the 70's and 80's.  They will tell you it is, but it's not. Corporate profit is higher now than it ever has been.  They'll outsource in a heartbeat to increase profit margins, and STILL whine that employee wages are killing them. 

[Old Philosopher]

...

Ol P- have you seen the report on minimum wage? If it had remained proportionate, it would be in the $23 per hour range today.  Wages aren't nearly the percentage of cash flow of business monies like they were in the 70's and 80's.  They will tell you it is, but it's not. Corporate profit is higher now than it ever has been.  They'll outsource in a heartbeat to increase profit margins, and STILL whine that employee wages are killing them.

I'm not talking about Fed or State minimum wage jobs.
The Teacher's Union in WA State threatens to strike nearly every year for higher wages. Even the engineers at Boeing have walked out twice in the past 7-8 years. The operating costs trickle down through every level, from the clerk at the register, to transportation costs of warehousing and handling delivery.  We've been in an upward spiral of more demands by more workers for decades. The cost of fuels has only recently entered the equation.
The effort involved in punching out an equipment part in a factory has not changed, other than to get easier through improved manufacturing techniques. The costs of materials has increased, but only because it costs more to supply those materials. Why?
From the standpoint of a corporation, they are forced to reduce their labor force when the salary and benefits paid to one worker are equal to what it cost them to employ two workers 20 years ago.
Why do the workers feel the need more money?  To pay higher bills for everything from utilities, to toasters, to pharmaceuticals. What has driven those costs up?  The demand for more compensation for the same amount of work. "Greed".....

[Mannlicher]

labor costs are just one part of the pie.  Federal, State and local taxes on businesses, environmental regulations, labor regulations, Obama care concerns, insurance costs.............. .....the list of reasons to move manufacturing just keep growing.

[SwampHanger]

labor costs are just one part of the pie.  Federal, State and local taxes on businesses, environmental regulations, labor regulations, Obama care concerns, insurance costs.............. .....the list of reasons to move manufacturing just keep growing.

Exactly right!!

[wsdstan]

The American consumer makes a lot of decisions that determine where products are made.  Walmart sells mostly Chinese made product because they can offer it at the lowest price.  Vice-Grips from China will probably outsell the domestically made ones even if they are of inferior quality because the average consumer uses price as the first and sometimes only decision point. 

We have evolved into a "throw away" culture.  Fewer people fix or repair anything and in a lot of consumer goods there are no replacement parts available even if you wanted to.  I buy American tools because I hate to support China and their politics but I buy gasoline made with middle eastern oil because there is no viable alternative.  We are rapidly approaching that position with everything.  I looked at some attachments for a Bobcat skid steer the other day.  They were made in China, shipped over here on a boat, and sell for half of what the manufacturer in eastern South Dakota sells them for. 

[Old Philosopher]

labor costs are just one part of the pie.  Federal, State and local taxes on businesses, environmental regulations, labor regulations, Obama care concerns, insurance costs.............. .....the list of reasons to move manufacturing just keep growing.

Follow the money....

Federal taxes
State Taxes
Environmental regulations
Health and insurance costs

Why have all these items increased in cost?  Labor regulations? Which ones in particular? What exactly are "fair labor laws"?

The fact remains that other cultures are more willing to work harder for less pay than most "Americans" these days, even in this country. Why aren't the crop fields of California and the orchards of Washington filled with local workers?
If you doubt me, try getting the neighbor's kid to mow your lawn for $5...or even $10.

[Red]

I don't have any desire to get into a debate here, so I am just going to throw my opinion out here:

Everyone wants jobs to come back to America. Everyone wants to buy that is made in America. But no one wants to PAY for things made here. GE (General Electric) for example. They just brought back appliance manufacturing to Louisville, KY this year. The newer front loading style washer and dryer sets were selling for around $1600 per set being manufactured in Mexico. The new USA made sets are upwards of $2700. And guess what... NO ONE IS BUYING THEM!

[zammer]

One of the big differences is...when people had good paying factory jobs they could afford to pay a higher price for an item, coupled with that tho is that there was less off-shore competition creating a cheaper product, so people just bought the product made in North America.

Now, just about anything made here is made over-seas and cheaper. People have become reliant upon cheaper goods, why? because they make less money, why? cause the well paying factory jobs ( or even some of the lesser paying jobs ) are gone.

Now that the momentum has shifted to people wanting cheap, even if a company like Red brought up, moves back stateside, the people have now become used to cheap and don't have well paying jobs to buy higher priced goods, kind of a catch 22.

Globalization cares not about the standard of living in any country, it only concerns itself with profit...unfortunat ely, we in N.America who grew up knowing what a middle class was, are seeing a way of life we all probably took for granted slowly fade away.

[Old Philosopher]

One of the big differences is...when people had good paying factory jobs they could afford to pay a higher price for an item, coupled with that tho is that there was less off-shore competition creating a cheaper product, so people just bought the product made in North America.

Now, just about anything made here is made over-seas and cheaper. People have become reliant upon cheaper goods, why? because they make less money, why? cause the well paying factory jobs ( or even some of the lesser paying jobs ) are gone.

Now that the momentum has shifted to people wanting cheap, even if a company like Red brought up, moves back stateside, the people have now become used to cheap and don't have well paying jobs to buy higher priced goods, kind of a catch 22.

Globalization cares not about the standard of living in any country, it only concerns itself with profit...unfortunat ely, we in N.America who grew up knowing what a middle class was, are seeing a way of life we all probably took for granted slowly fade away.

This is the spiral I was talking about. Long before outsourcing became an issue, factory workers were loosing their jobs to automation. I was watching a How Is It Made TV episode and they pointed out that what used to take 20 factory workers a day to produce was now done by machines and ONE operator.

As for current workers not having as much money, I disagree. Way back in 1987 I wrote a computer program that compared the consumer prices of major staple items (bread, hamburger, cars) in 1964 with the wages back then. It also compared current (circa 1987) wages with consumer prices.
What the program did was tell a person how many hours they had to work in 1964 to buy a loaf of bread, and how many hours (minutes) they had to work in 1987 to buy a loaf at current prices.
In all cases, in 1987 a person had to work fewer hours to pay for, say a car, than they did 20 years earlier, even though the cost of those items had drastically increased.  So had wages.
I see no reason to believe the escalation (buying power) today hasn't continued to increase.
In 1964, I was making $.75/hr wages. In 1987, I was making $12.00/hr. A loaf of bread or a pound of hamburger had only doubled in price, compared to my income.

[Mannlicher]

the 800 pound gorilla in the room, is we just don't need as many people to make everything we want.  That means jobs have disappeared.  We have millions more Citizens than we did 30 years ago, and need millions less of them to produce everything we want/need.   Throw in all the jobs that went off shore, and well, it begins to 'splane what is going on in America today.
Trick is how are those extra bodies going to support themselves?  Answer?  They can't, and so they become the 'recipient class'.  Birth to death, on the public dole.  It is only going to get worse.

[Old Philosopher]

the 800 pound gorilla in the room, is we just don't need as many people to make everything we want.  That means jobs have disappeared.  We have millions more Citizens than we did 30 years ago, and need millions less of them to produce everything we want/need.   Throw in all the jobs that went off shore, and well, it begins to 'splane what is going on in America today.
Trick is how are those extra bodies going to support themselves?  Answer?  They can't, and so they become the 'recipient class'.  Birth to death, on the public dole.  It is only going to get worse.

Definition of Modern Socialism: The productive (working class) supporting the unproductive (consumer class). Anyone who thinks we live in a "class-less society" is..........

[wsdstan]

the 800 pound gorilla in the room, is we just don't need as many people to make everything we want.  That means jobs have disappeared.  We have millions more Citizens than we did 30 years ago, and need millions less of them to produce everything we want/need.   Throw in all the jobs that went off shore, and well, it begins to 'splane what is going on in America today.
Trick is how are those extra bodies going to support themselves?  Answer?  They can't, and so they become the 'recipient class'.  Birth to death, on the public dole.  It is only going to get worse.

Definition of Modern Socialism: The productive (working class) supporting the unproductive (consumer class). Anyone who thinks we live in a "class-less society" is..........

I wonder at times what it would be like to live on the other side, the give me support side?

Of course I would also like to go back to the US of the sixties.

Regardless, I have bought my last pair of new Vice-grips.  Farm auctions from now on.

[PetrifiedWood]

I was going to post something, but thought better of it.

Suffice it to say, I agree that our population is increasing faster than it should.

Consider this, the more people there are, the less food, water, land, and wealth there is to go around.

[Old Philosopher]

I was going to post something, but thought better of it.

Suffice it to say, I agree that our population is increasing faster than it should.

Consider this, the more people there are, the less food, water, land, and wealth there is to go around.

Only because we insist on living in "hives", and having stuff brought to us. Wold-wide, there is more than enough land for everyone to have their 'elbow room'. Do the math. Divide the surface area of habitable land on the Planet by the 6 Billion inhabitants. But nobody these days want's to live in Siberia.

[wolfy]

Plenty of room out here on 'the buffalo commons', too . 

[wsdstan]

I was going to post something, but thought better of it.

Suffice it to say, I agree that our population is increasing faster than it should.

Consider this, the more people there are, the less food, water, land, and wealth there is to go around.

Only because we insist on living in "hives", and having stuff brought to us. Wold-wide, there is more than enough land for everyone to have their 'elbow room'. Do the math. Divide the surface area of habitable land on the Planet by the 6 Billion inhabitants. But nobody these days want's to live in Siberia.

Yeah, the growing season is too short there.

[Old Philosopher]

I was going to post something, but thought better of it.

Suffice it to say, I agree that our population is increasing faster than it should.

Consider this, the more people there are, the less food, water, land, and wealth there is to go around.

Only because we insist on living in "hives", and having stuff brought to us. Wold-wide, there is more than enough land for everyone to have their 'elbow room'. Do the math. Divide the surface area of habitable land on the Planet by the 6 Billion inhabitants. But nobody these days want's to live in Siberia.

Yeah, the growing season is too short there.

That...and there's no Wal-Mart.

[PetrifiedWood]

I think the "habitable" part is where you will lose them.

[Highlife]

Interesting to read this article after being in the Middle East for the past 3 months. I understand it's not easy to compete in a global market whe America has minimum wage, taxes, copyright laws (as does Europe), and many countries do not. Hence why much of Europe is also struggling today.

When your labor force happily (seemingly) works for $100/week, you can compete on a world-scale, even with an inferior product (price almost always wins).

But, I also think that if we (modern people) started buying "heirloom" items like our granddads did, take care of that one item, then we'd be better off. Not to mention all the drama with healthcare costs, insurance, etc. It's money spent on carelessness (no offense healthcare or insurance providers). Just bad habits.

Also, where's the investment in ingenuity? The Bell corporation (and others) used to drop bankloads on young talented kids just to sit around and think up new ideas, which changed America and the World. Boosted our economy globally.

And don't get me started on our war spending...

Just sayin', times change. Some for the good, some not. If everyone took a little ownership, a little responsibility, and respected others, we'd have a better place to call home.

Ok, soapbox over. Thanks for reading this far.

[wsdstan]

Not to mention all the drama with healthcare costs, insurance, etc. It's money spent on carelessness (no offense healthcare or insurance providers). Just bad habits.
 

Boy are you in for a shock when you get older.  Carelessness has nothing to do with it for a lot of people.  Genetics does however. 

[Binalith]

I'd like to see what would happen to the price of consumables manufactured anywhere if we removed the financial speculators and cavalier stock traders. Population, jobs, wages, costs of the polis in general, all pale in comparison to the corporate feudal lords gallivanting across the earth taking what they can and pitting countries and people against each other. I think it would be more productive to focus on corporate greed and brutality before finding fault with your fellow workers. Small people are a less threatening rival though.

Corporations all over the world are recording record profits and there's no jobs or money...weird. sounds like another time in history, what'd they call it? Oh the gilded age.

serfdom's a b*tch

[Old Philosopher]

....

serfdom's a b*tch

You said a mouthful there! "Serf" is an appropriate term. We don't even own the land we "bought", and are paying rent on in the form of property taxes. It can be confiscated with the stroke of a pen. Don't pay your "rent", and it reverts to the County, and/or State.
Where else can you have the privilege of paying a mortgage AND property taxes? 
Why do I hear the strains of Tennessee Ernie's song "Sixteen Tons" echoing in the background?

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
 Another day older and deeper in debt
 Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
 I owe my soul to the company store."

[MnSportsman]

   I like to get out in the woods. Listen to nature, observe the wildlife, and basically have a good time.

I usually have an american made vise-grips somewhere around.

[wolfy]

My favorite tool of all time, again made the news in the latest issue of FARM JOURNAL. 

http://www.agweb.com/farmjournal/article/in-the-shop-pliers-the-universal-tool--naa-dan-anderson/

[Wilderbeast]

I have a pair of Stanley Proto Tools locking vice grip pliers made in the USA and comparable in quality to the USA made Vice Grips.

The off-shore knock offs don't hold a candle to them.

I wish we made more stuff here in North America.

[wsdstan]

I have a tool drawer with a lot of Vice-Grip pliers.  Well, okay, some are made by some POS offshore company but not many.  There are regular ones, needle nose, clamps, and so forth.  They have done about everything from locking onto stuff to pull it up on the roof, holding things while screwing or nailing what its holding to a post or wall, and anything, just about, that you can think of.  An old pair even sacrificed its life to hold up a stainless steel pipe  inside a brick chimney for a time.   

They are a versatile tool to the nth degree.

[wolfy]

That's good to know about Stanley, Mike.  Since Irwin bought the VISE-GRIP name and moved the manufacturing plant from Nebraska to China, I have no loyalty to the brand......just the design.  BUY AMERICAN and avoid the yellow hoard! 

[Orbean]

One of the big differences is...when people had good paying factory jobs they could afford to pay a higher price for an item, coupled with that tho is that there was less off-shore competition creating a cheaper product, so people just bought the product made in North America.

Now, just about anything made here is made over-seas and cheaper. People have become reliant upon cheaper goods, why? because they make less money, why? cause the well paying factory jobs ( or even some of the lesser paying jobs ) are gone.

Now that the momentum has shifted to people wanting cheap, even if a company like Red brought up, moves back stateside, the people have now become used to cheap and don't have well paying jobs to buy higher priced goods, kind of a catch 22.

Globalization cares not about the standard of living in any country, it only concerns itself with profit...unfortunat ely, we in N.America who grew up knowing what a middle class was, are seeing a way of life we all probably took for granted slowly fade away.

This is the spiral I was talking about. Long before outsourcing became an issue, factory workers were loosing their jobs to automation. I was watching a How Is It Made TV episode and they pointed out that what used to take 20 factory workers a day to produce was now done by machines and ONE operator.

As for current workers not having as much money, I disagree. Way back in 1987 I wrote a computer program that compared the consumer prices of major staple items (bread, hamburger, cars) in 1964 with the wages back then. It also compared current (circa 1987) wages with consumer prices.
What the program did was tell a person how many hours they had to work in 1964 to buy a loaf of bread, and how many hours (minutes) they had to work in 1987 to buy a loaf at current prices.
In all cases, in 1987 a person had to work fewer hours to pay for, say a car, than they did 20 years earlier, even though the cost of those items had drastically increased.  So had wages.
I see no reason to believe the escalation (buying power) today hasn't continued to increase.
In 1964, I was making $.75/hr wages. In 1987, I was making $12.00/hr. A loaf of bread or a pound of hamburger had only doubled in price, compared to my income.

I respectfully will say you are comparing apples to oranges in regards to wages. Hopefully as your work experience expands so does your wage. Secondly there is inflation. I would say rising gas oil prices are the major culprit, but there is no one factor that is exclusively the cause.

[Quenchcrack]

My favorite tool of all time, again made the news in the latest issue of FARM JOURNAL. 

http://www.agweb.com/farmjournal/article/in-the-shop-pliers-the-universal-tool--naa-dan-anderson/

Yeah, and as arthritis devastates your finger joints and grip strength, those pliers become all the more important.  I can see it now:  New Hit Movie:  Wolfy Plier Hand!

As for China, I grow weary of scandals involving adulterated foods, counterfeit merchandise, cheap knock-offs, and my favorite complaint: tools that look like tool you know but are totally non-functional.  When a US or European company sends work to China, they are teaching the Yellow Peril how to make new stuff.  Eventually, they will be competing with (and probably bankrupting) those who sent their work to China.  The Chinese Corporations (Especially State Owned ones) have absolutely no morals or ethics. They will lie to you, bait-and-switch you, deny your valid claims, fail to provide customer service and in general, behave like there will never be a price to pay for this behavior.  In our world, there is always someone who can make something a little shabbier and sell it a little cheaper and those who buy on price alone are this mans lawful prey.

[vallehombre]

...

Ol P- have you seen the report on minimum wage? If it had remained proportionate, it would be in the $23 per hour range today.  Wages aren't nearly the percentage of cash flow of business monies like they were in the 70's and 80's.  They will tell you it is, but it's not. Corporate profit is higher now than it ever has been.  They'll outsource in a heartbeat to increase profit margins, and STILL whine that employee wages are killing them.

I'm not talking about Fed or State minimum wage jobs.
The Teacher's Union in WA State threatens to strike nearly every year for higher wages. Even the engineers at Boeing have walked out twice in the past 7-8 years. The operating costs trickle down through every level, from the clerk at the register, to transportation costs of warehousing and handling delivery.  We've been in an upward spiral of more demands by more workers for decades. The cost of fuels has only recently entered the equation.
The effort involved in punching out an equipment part in a factory has not changed, other than to get easier through improved manufacturing techniques. The costs of materials has increased, but only because it costs more to supply those materials. Why?
From the standpoint of a corporation, they are forced to reduce their labor force when the salary and benefits paid to one worker are equal to what it cost them to employ two workers 20 years ago.
Why do the workers feel the need more money?  To pay higher bills for everything from utilities, to toasters, to pharmaceuticals. What has driven those costs up?  The demand for more compensation for the same amount of work. "Greed".....

"Why do the workers feel the need more money?  To pay higher bills for everything from utilities, to toasters, to pharmaceuticals. What has driven those costs up?  The demand for more compensation for the same amount of work. "Greed"....."


"The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared for, not by labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of the property interests of the country." George F. Baer, July 1902.

"There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down." David Ricardo, 1820.

"The iron law of wages." Turgot, 1766 (Named but theory credited to Ricardo, above).


Walmart is the largest company in the world.
1. Walmart earned $485.7 billion in revenue in 2014, which outpaced No. 2 Exxon Mobil by $103 billion.
2. If Walmart were a country, its sales would rank it 28th in the world in GDP. That?s right behind Norway and ahead of Austria.
Source: Fortune.

Among other practices, Walmart routinely pays employees wages at  levels that necessitate them to seek public assistance. The company even goes as far as to, famously, provide information on how to get on the dole. Assistance that is provided by the public treasury. That's us, folks.

A situation that "advances" the Iron Law Of Wages downward beyond what even early industrial capitalists considered minimal standards of subsistence. Early industrial capitalists argued for the limiting, if not rescission, of the "Poor Laws" of their day, now their use is the most profitable "business model."

It is always interesting to see working folks arguing in favor of their own oppression. In a sad and unfortunately predictable way that would make Calvin feel if not happy at least reassured.

Friends, if anyone thinks this is about political parties or ideologies or hard working or lazy or "security" or this and that label you are seriously mistaken. It's just about money - who creates it, controls it, the how of it we all understand the why. That's all it's ever about. The rest is just smoke and mirrors.

Now it's time for me to go outside and play. That at least is real.

[Quenchcrack]

Vallehombre, AMEN, Brother!  We, The People,  are being taxed to provide public assistance for the millions who cannot earn a living wage in America due to the irresponsible type of Capitalism that our government lauds as Sacred!  Every society needs a little revolution once in a while.   

[imnukensc]

Gettin' a little political, ain't we?

[wolfy]

Yeah, the thread is about the merits of the pliers and sources for quality tools in today's market. 

[wsdstan]

History shows us that our system is as good as it gets.  All the others cause human suffering at a rate we don't enjoy.

Now, who has a pair of American made Vice Grips made before Irwin moved it offshore?

[wolfy]

ALL of mine were manufactured in DeWitt, NEBRASKA by the Petersen Mfg. Co. 

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/machines_12.html

[Quenchcrack]

Yeah, we went over the hill there, sorry.

[wolfy]

No worries, been there a few times, myself.

[wsdstan]

Thanks Wolfy, that ad is neat.  I have a couple pair of the originals but most of mine are what I think are made by them but marked for Craftsman or Penncrest, and other retailers. 

I keep an eye out for them at flea markets and auctions but there are not a lot of the good ones around out here.

[vallehombre]

Gettin' a little political, ain't we?

Mea culpa

[wolfy]

Not to worry......lt's sprinkled throughout the thread, but let's just concentrate on the tool, its many uses & the many stories surrounding them. 

In that same vein, and out of curiosity, I checked eBay for pricing on non-Irwin, genuine made-in-Nebraska, Petersen Vise-Grips.      I've decided that since I lost all my guns in that canoeing accident  , I'm going to take my vintage Vise-Grip collection and start storing them in my empty gun safe!

[wsdstan]

Oh good, something else I cannot afford in my retirement years.   

Wolfy I have a quality vice-grip plier marked Penncrest (JC Penny's name for tools back when they were a good place to shop).  Any idea w0ho might have made those?

[wolfy]

I remember those tools in the Penney's catalog, but I don't know who made them. 

[PetrifiedWood]

I have a pair of Vise Grips older than I am, that belonged to my grandfather. I am pretty sure they are the real deal. I recently bought a set of the Irwins because I wanted the other sizes.

[wolfy]

This is not an intentional 'bump' of one of my OLD threads, but I saw that a 'guest' was reading it, so, for fun, I just re-read the thread myself.  One thing I noticed, particularly, is that most of us misspell VISE-Grips as VICE-Grips.....or maybe not.

[wsdstan]

Okay, just take my advice as I advise you what to do. 

[wolfy]

I have and I will!

[Old Philosopher]

I'm not sure about 'Rice-grips'.  I use tweezers myself.