|
|
Invest
in Education...
says
Stanley Furniture's Albert Prillaman. It's the
only way to save Southside from a Third World
future.
Albert
Prillaman is CEO of a company with deep roots
in Southside Virginia. Founded in 1924, Stanley
Furniture, Inc., was one of dozens of home-grown
companies that prospered at the expense of Northern
manufacturers by taking advantage of the cheap
labor coming off Southern farms. Other furniture
and apparel companies in the Martinsville/Henry
County area -- Bassett, Hooker and American in
furniture, Sale, Pannill and Bassett-Walker in
apparel -- all got their start in the WWI-WWII
era.
|
| serving
as governor of Virginia from 1954 to 1958.
As late as the 1980s, A.L. Philpott, an attorney
with close ties to the Bassett family, was the most
powerful member of the House of Delegates.
Semi-skilled workers
employed by the furniture companies required little
formal education. For decades, the citizenry and
industry alike preferred to keep taxes low rather
than invest in the quality of local schools. Nearly
80 years later, however, Martinsville and Henry
County find themselves competing for industrial
investment in a global arena. Workers expect U.S.-level
wages, but they lack the education to make up
the higher cost through greater productivity.
As a consequence, thousands of apparel and textile
jobs have decamped for Mexico, and the furniture
industry is moving en masse to China.
The situation in
China is analogous to that in rural Virginia in
the 1920s. Eager to make more money, millions
are migrating from the farms into urban centers
where they're willing to labor for less than factory
workers in older, established manufacturing centers.
Not only are wages
lower in China, says Prillaman, so is the cost
of building a manufacturing facility. Then factor
in the fact that the Chinese impose fewer regulations
and don't expect employers to pick up the tab
for health care. "We figure that for every
one person we put on the job, they can put 20.
Their labor cost is one-twentieth ours. ... To
build a factory costs $5 to $10 per foot, here
it’s $40 per foot."
The U.S. still
offers superior infrastructure, Prillaman says.
American companies outsourcing to China grapple
with significant logistical problems. On the other
hand, Chinese banks will fund almost any project
that puts people to work. (He's not sure how long
the Chinese banking system will stay solvent,
but right now it's still funding deals.)
What impressed
Prillaman most from a trip to China last month
was the thirst for education. "These
people are on the Internet, they see TV, they
know what’s going on around the world. Their appetite
is growing," he says. The Chinese "have
very high educational standards. All they talk
about over there is education. Young people are
all learning English. Their drive is incredible."
He didn't witness any child labor in China, he
added: All the young people are in school. The
Chinese are rapidly building their human capital
and they will reap the benefits in higher productivity
for years to come.
What he observed
in China stands in sad contrast to what he's seen
in the Old Dominion, Prillaman says. Most politicians
here, especially in Southside, give lip service
to education but are scared to raise taxes to
fund it. "I hear it all the time: Everyone's
in a budget squeeze."
July 22, 2002
|
