美国劳工真正的问题：生产率不够高

American Labor’s Real Problem: It Isn’t Productive Enough


美国制造业每小时产出的年增长率远低于台湾、韩国和中国的竞争者。薪酬最终与生产率挂钩，在这一方面，美国制造业公司和工人陷入了困境。


上周五，通用汽车、Stellantis和福特汽车的数千名UAW工人举行罢工。

对于全美汽车工人联合会(United Auto Workers, 简称UAW)来说，要求底特律的三家汽车制造商提供更高的薪酬和更好的工作与生活平衡是完全合理的。毕竟，在当前劳动力市场出现历史性的紧俏之际，工人们得到的正是这些待遇。
For the United Auto Workers, it makes perfect sense to demand more pay and better work-life balance from Detroit’s three automakers. After all, workers throughout this historically tight labor market are getting exactly that.
   
但对罢工的工厂工人来说合理的事情，对整个制造业来说就不合理了。薪酬最终与生产率挂钩，即公司员工生产产品的数量和质量。在这一方面，美国制造业公司和工人陷入了困境。这一问题在服装和家具等劳动密集型产品上并不存在，这类生产很久以前就大部分转移到海外了。这个问题存在于最先进的产品上：电动汽车和电池、发电设备、商用飞机和半导体。
But what makes sense to striking factory workers makes no sense for manufacturing as a whole. Pay is ultimately tied to productivity: the quantity and quality of products a company’s workforce churns out. And here, American manufacturing companies and workers are in trouble. The issue isn’t with labor-intensive products such as clothing and furniture, which largely moved offshore long ago. Rather, it’s in the most advanced products: electric cars and batteries, power-generation equipment, commercial aircraft and semiconductors.
   
美国总统拜登(Biden)或许正在庆祝一场以新工厂为基础的制造业复兴，但昔日制造业代表福特汽车公司(Ford Motor Co., F)、英特尔公司(Intel Corp., INTC)、波音公司(Boeing, BA)和通用电气公司(General Electric Co., GE)的股价表明，人们有理由对这场复兴的持久性持怀疑态度。上述公司的股价目前较其历史高点差得很远。
President Biden might be celebrating a manufacturing renaissance based on new factories, but the share prices of former manufacturing icons Ford Motor, Intel, Boeing and General Electric suggest skepticism is warranted about the durability of this renaissance: All are at a fraction of all-time share-price highs.
   
是的，美国公司在设计和创新方面仍然领先世界，但由此产生的产品越来越多地在国外生产，尤其是在亚洲。拜登和他的前任特朗普(Donald Trump)一样，希望通过关税、补贴和其他政府干预措施来扭转这一局面。但是日本、韩国、台湾，尤其是中国，当然会大力干预，以帮助本国制造商。
Yes, American companies still lead the world in design and innovation, but the resulting products increasingly are made abroad, especially in Asia. Biden, like former President Donald Trump before him, wants to reverse this, through tariffs, subsidies and other government interventions. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and especially China certainly intervened plenty to help their manufacturers. 
   
但将制造业的表现仅仅归因于政府政策是危险的，这低估了亚洲制造商在成本和质量上取得的进步，也低估了美国制造商的下滑程度。
But attributing manufacturing performance to government policies alone is dangerous; it underplays how far Asian manufacturers have come in cost and quality and how far their American counterparts have slipped. 
   
自2009年以来，美国制造业每小时产出的年增长率仅为0.2%，远低于整体经济以及欧洲和除日本以外亚洲的其他经济体。
Since 2009, manufacturing output per hour in the U.S. has grown just 0.2% a year, well below the economy as a whole and peer economies in Europe and Asia, except Japan.



机动车制造业的情况尤其糟糕：从2012年到去年，生产率急剧下降32%，尽管这在一定程度上无疑是受到疫情的影响。
In motor-vehicle manufacturing, the picture is especially bad: From 2012 through last year, productivity plummeted 32%, though some of this was no doubt due to pandemic disruptions. 
   
说美国工人生产率不够高，并不是说这是他们的错；毕竟，生产率取决于工人以外的诸多因素，包括管理决策、供应链、公共基础设施和监管。例如，根据华盛顿智库信息技术与创新基金会(Information Technology and Innovation Foundation)的数据，美国制造商使用的机器人远远少于竞争对手，尤其是台湾、韩国和中国的竞争者。
To say American workers aren’t productive enough isn’t to say it’s their fault; after all, productivity depends on a multitude of factors beyond the workers, including management decisions, the supply chain, public infrastructure and regulation. For example, American manufacturers use far fewer robots than their competitors, in particular in Taiwan, South Korea and China, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank.
   
然而，工人的命运与这些因素的综合影响密不可分，而对UAW来说，这一情况很糟糕。多年以来，底特律三巨头福特、通用汽车公司(General Motors Co., GM)和克莱斯勒所有者Stellantis的市场份额日益被进口车和非工会美国工厂所蚕食。它们在君迪(J.D. Power)评选的10个最可靠品牌中只占两个，在《消费者报告》(Consumer Reports)评选的10款最佳汽车中只占一款。在电动汽车领域，它们远远落后于特斯拉(Tesla Inc., TSLA)，特斯拉产量最高的工厂和主要出口基地位于上海。
Nonetheless, workers’ fates are inextricably tied to how these factors in combination perform, and for the UAW, they have performed badly. The Detroit Three—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, owner of Chrysler—have been losing market share for years, to other brands and to nonunion U.S. plants. They account for just two of the 10 most dependable brands ranked by J.D. Power and just one of the 10 best cars picked by Consumer Reports. In electric vehicles, they are far behind Tesla, whose highest-output plant and main export base is in Shanghai. 



仓库和医院可以将提高工资和减少工时的成本转嫁给客户，而不会被外国竞争对手趁火打劫。制造商则不能有这种奢望。这就是为何底特律对UAW的要求十分反感。在咨询公司艾睿铂(AlixPartners)排名的11个跨国制造商中，虽然底特律车企的员工人均产出名列前茅，但每辆车成本也是如此。成本最低的则是中国车厂。
Warehouses and hospitals can pass the cost of higher wages and reduced hours to customers without being undercut by foreign competitors. Manufacturers don’t have that luxury. That’s why Detroit is recoiling at the UAW’s demands. While their output per employee is among the highest of 11 global manufacturers ranked by consultants AlixPartners, so are their costs per vehicle. The lowest cost: China’s. 
   
劳动力方面的问题不仅是成本，还有熟练工人的短缺。“他们找到理想人选，雇佣他们，培训他们，却留不住他们，”咨询公司奥纬咨询(Oliver Wyman)的汽车专家Jim Schmidt说。“很多年轻劳动力不想做这类工作”。对一些人来说，缺勤是另一个问题。
Labor presents problems other than just cost, such as the shortage of skilled workers. “They find desirable candidates, they hire them, they train them, they don’t retain them,” said Jim Schmidt, an automotive expert at consultants Oliver Wyman. “A lot of the younger workforce doesn’t want to do that type of work.” For some, absenteeism is another problem.
   
“你需要大量额外的劳动力来弥补缺勤的影响，”Schmidt称。“这可能对生产率、质量和企业文化产生巨大影响。”
“You need a lot of additional labor to backfill for absenteeism,” Schmidt said. “That can lead to large effects on productivity, quality and culture.”
   
美国制造业的问题远不限于汽车行业。自从波音公司最畅销的737飞机因2018年和2019年的坠机事件停飞以来，波音受生产问题拖累，远远落后于欧洲的空中客车(Airbus, EADSY, ABI.YY, AIR.FR)。空中客车去年的飞机交付量是波音的三倍，今年是波音的两倍。波音的787梦想飞机(Dreamliner)一直受到质量缺陷的困扰。航空航天咨询公司AIR的Miche lMerluzeau说，自新冠疫情以来，波音经历了“员工忠诚度危机”，人员流动率高加剧了供应链问题。
The U.S.’s manufacturing problems go much further than autos. Since its top-selling 737 was grounded by crashes in 2018 and 2019, production problems have left Boeing far behind Europe’s Airbus, which delivered three times as many aircraft last year and twice as many this year. Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has been plagued by quality defects. Since the pandemic, Boeing has experienced “a crisis of loyalty among its workforce” with high turnover compounding supply chain problems, said Michel Merluzeau of AIR, an aerospace advisory firm. 
   
在半导体领域，美国公司在设计方面仍占主导地位，但在生产方面则逐步让位于亚洲。美国同时进行芯片设计和生产的大公司仅剩英特尔公司(Intel, INTC)一家，但该公司的制造能力已远远落后于台湾积体电路制造股份有限公司(Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., 2330.TW, TSM, 简称﹕台积电)。如今，最先进制程的芯片没有美国制造的。
In semiconductors, U.S. companies still dominate design, while steadily ceding production to Asia. Intel is the last major U.S. firm that both designs and makes chips, but its manufacturing capabilities have fallen far behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Today, none of the most advanced chips are made in the U.S.
   
特朗普和拜登政府试图修正这一国家安全威胁，采取的部分行动包括通过《芯片与科学法案》(Chips and Science Act)授权补贴，说服台积电在亚利桑那州建造两座晶圆厂（即半导体制造厂）。
This is a national security threat which the Trump and Biden administrations have sought to correct by persuading TSMC, in part through subsidies authorized by the Chips and Science Act, to build two fabs, or semiconductor fabrication plants, in Arizona. 
   
这些芯片制造工厂能否像台湾的芯片厂一样高产，关键取决于管理和劳动力。前台积电研发副总裁、现任台湾国立清华大学(National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan)半导体研究学院院长林本坚(Burn Lin)表示，光有最先进的工具是不够的。他说，员工还必须知道如何解读这些工具生成的数以千计测量结果，如何把握好监测察看相应工具的频次：监测太频繁会浪费时间，而频次过低则会产生缺陷。
Whether those fabs will be as productive as those in Taiwan depends crucially on management and labor. Burn Lin, a former vice president of research and development at TSMC who is now dean of the college of semiconductor research at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, said it isn’t enough to have the most sophisticated tools. He said employees must know how to interpret thousands of measurements that the tools generate, and monitor the tool just the right number of times: too often wastes time, too infrequently introduces defects.
  
在这方面把控得当往往要靠潜移默化的培养以及培训，还有在实践中学习体会，这些东西没有办法即刻照搬。林本坚表示，早在上世纪90年代台积电就在华盛顿州建立了一座芯片制造工厂，而直到现在，该工厂的产出率仍低于台湾的同等芯片制造工厂。台积电一位发言人表示，（这些工厂）产出率不相上下。
Getting this right often depends on culture, training and learning-by-doing, which can’t be instantly transplanted. TSMC has had a fab in Washington state since the 1990s, and its yields are still lower than at the equivalent fabs in Taiwan, Lin said. A TSMC spokeswoman said yields are comparable.  
   
林本坚表示，即使建造芯片制造工厂的一间无尘室，其混凝土浇注和管道焊接方式也有特定要求，以避免出现最终会拉低产出率的微小误差。正因为如此，台积电试图把数百名工人从台湾带到美国亚利桑那州，协助当地的工厂建设。美国当地工会表示反对，称台积电此举有悖于《芯片法案》(Chip Act)创造本土就业机会的目的。
Even constructing a fab’s clean room involves pouring the concrete and welding the pipes in just such a way to avoid tiny imprecisions that ultimately reduce yields, Lin said. It’s why TSMC is seeking to bring several hundred workers from Taiwan to Arizona to aid in the construction. Local trade unions have objected, saying this contradicts the Chips Act’s goal of creating local employment. 
   
美国的工会需要承认他们的工人还不能胜任这项工作。“不操练，就掌握不了技能，所有人都是这样，”Kevin Xu最近在他重点关注中国的电子周刊《互联》(Interconnected)上写道。Xu曾与工会合作助力前总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)当选。Xu说，工会需要被告知“他们不是最棒的，但如果他们保持谦虚（并）吸收其他地方工人的所有知识和技能，他们能够成为最棒的”。
Unions need to accept they’re not yet up to the job. “Everyone loses the skills they don’t practice,” Kevin Xu wrote recently on his China-focused blog, Interconnected. Xu, who once worked with unions to get former President Barack Obama elected, says unions need to be told “that they are not the best, but they can be if they stay humble (and) soak up all the know-how and skills from workers elsewhere.”