[PRCo] Re: Charleroi etc.

[Fred Schneider]

Roger, and anyone else who cares:

There are two many factors to simplify the issues.   Industry likes low wage
areas (Mexico is good), lack of labor unions (the Carolinas were good except
they've lost a lot of their jobs due to migration of garment shops to Mexico and
the downturn in tobacco), good transportation (generally this means interstate
highways and not railroads), cheap utilities (Allegheny Power is skirting
bankruptcy now so there are no givens), low taxes (that rules out Pennsylvania),
abuntant youthful workers (that tends to rule out western Pennsylvania - this
state has the second oldest population in the nation). The youth tend to lower
retirement contributions and medical insurance premiums and they tend to be
better trained.   Lamentably, western and northern Pennsylvania has everything
going against it.   The weights applied to each need vary depending on what is
being produced, stocked, or sold.   Perhaps our most recent nail in the cross
has been incredibly high medical malpractice insurance premiums (even the boss
wants doctors when he gets sick).

I don't have any solutions, Roger.  A good industrial development authority
helps, but even it needs something marketable.  Right now I think about the only
thing Washington and Westmoreland counties have to market is gasoline, food,
repairs, lodging and peep shows to the truck drivers on I-70 and I-77.  None of
these are high wage jobs.  Western Pennsylvania was a classic oversized
"one-industry town."   Steel,  aluminum and machined steel products, and coal
for energy to produce the steel and aluminum, and railroads to move in raw
materials and steel to market.  There was also a glass and crockery industry but
it too has also pretty much vanished.  I've never seen any numbers.  I would
love to know just how much of the steel output went into railroad rails and
railroad cars.  I suspect that most of us knew Pittsburgh at its best because of
legislation in the 1930s that allowed unions which secured unheard of pay and
fringe benefits for their members, and now we're seeing it at is most
depressed.  We're too young to have known the area in the 1880s and early 1900s
when the employees were slaves.  It's been 21 years since the steel collapse ...
and those people who are still there are the ones that were too old to move out
in the 1980s.  I recognize my own cynicism.

roger wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fschnei at supernet.com>
> To: <tsquare at toad.net>; <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 5:22 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Charleroi etc.
> Thats a real sad story about whats happening down there.  There really is no
> solution to this sort of thing either is there !!!
>
> >
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