Here's What Happens When Corporations Offshore Your Job
“They want us to live in that constant state of fear."
By Paul Blest and Samuel Black, More Perfect Union
The companies making the equipment that powers America’s farms and construction sites have long been known for building their products in America — until now.
In the past year, John Deere and Case New Holland — have laid off thousands of union workers and shipped those jobs to other countries with lower wage standards. The companies have used the threat of more job cuts to keep their remaining employees in check.
“[Case New Holland] wants us to live in that constant state of fear,” Nick Guernsey, the president of UAW Local 807 in Iowa, told More Perfect Union. After Case workers struck a new deal with the company in January 2023, the company laid off hundreds of workers about a year later amid a push to shift jobs to Mexico. “Not only did they have a gun to our head, they had it cocked as well.”
Deere alone has announced 1,500 more U.S. layoffs, including dozens last week at a plant in Ottumwa, Iowa. Last year, the company cut its workforce in Ottumwa by a third through a mix of layoffs and early retirement packages. Chris Laursen, who worked at the company for more than 20 years, took one of those packages.
“John Deere has been the premier employer here in Ottumwa and many of the small communities throughout Iowa and Illinois for many, many years,” Laursen told More Perfect Union. “But recently, they've moved production of all the mower conditioner equipment, the cutting department, to Monterrey, Mexico.”
“Moving to somewhere like Mexico is attractive to them because they have a cheaper workforce,” he added.
American manufacturing’s decline has been accelerated for decades by bad trade deals, beginning with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed by former President Bill Clinton. A 2018 report by Public Citizen found that the United States had lost nearly 4.5 million jobs since 1993, the year before the agreement took effect.
Union membership in Iowa and the greater Midwest has dropped by more than half since NAFTA. And even the remaining union workers are often worse off than their predecessors, subjected to unfair tiered pay scales that start new employees at a lower wage than their colleagues, even as the cost of living has increased exponentially.
The companies, meanwhile, are doing just fine: Deere made a $10 billion profit in 2023 while spending more than $7 billion on stock buybacks.
The political tides have shifted, however, and President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump both promised to bring back manufacturing jobs. The Biden administration used provisions in the USMCA, signed by Trump during his first term, to crack down on corporate union-busting against Mexican workers. Workers and their advocates on both sides of the border hope that by encouraging labor organizing in Mexico, the USMCA can start to raise wages and gradually end the corporate race to the bottom. Progress is slow, however, and workers are looking for much more; Trump, who won every Midwestern state except Illinois and Minnesota, has promised a targeted tariff on Deere of 200 percent if the company moves production to Mexico as planned.
We talked to manufacturing workers in both the Midwest and Mexico about how companies are pitting them against each other for scraps while executives reap the rewards — and how politicians can finally put the brakes on the exploitative trade policies that led to the destruction of American manufacturing.