Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, has been in the news recently because he suggested that “outsourcing” most of American manufacturing to other countries in the past several decades was done without much thought to the long-term consequences. We could have told him that.

It was about 30 years ago that rank-and-file union members were discussing the outcomes of the downsizing, merging, and “outsourcing” of industry that was gaining speed in America, and the picture that was emerging was not a hopeful one.

Those particular conversations were going on in Albany, New York, but it is certain that they were going on in many other parts of the country, notably in what was rapidly becoming the great American “rust belt.”

There was economic devastation in communities throughout the Upper Midwest, the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic states, and, of course, many of the southern states where American industry had fled in the half-century before that to escape the higher wages and benefits of the unionized states.

No one was exempt from the rush to export industries and jobs from the U.S. to other countries where the pay was low, benefits non-existent, and environmental laws - if there were any - not enforced.

One union representative of the Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) was at the bargaining table in 1980 with General Electric management in Hudson Falls, an industrial village on the upper Hudson River, where several hundred local workers were trying to negotiate decent wages and, at the same time, not give GE an excuse to pull all of the work at the plant, which produces capacitors.

During a break in negotiations, most of the participants sat around the table talking about the budding “globalization” of the U.S. and other economies. One of the GE bargainers half jokingly said, “You know, ideally, GE would just put all of its factories on ships and move them around the world where labor costs were the lowest.”

In a sense, that’s just what they did. At that time, though, GE already was manufacturing in several other countries, probably as many as 20, but the indication was that the speed of what became known as “outsourcing” was to accelerate. Other corporations were doing the same and the ones that lagged a little would be running to catch up with the move of their own manufacturing to low-wage countries.

It was easy to see what might happen to the nation as a result of emptying the landscape of most manufacturing by Corporate America. All anyone had to do was look at the effects on small town America when the one or two major employers in town decided to move out. It wasn’t a great leap to see a nation in the same distress.

That’s what occurred in auto, steel, rubber, textiles, clothing, shoes, appliances, factory equipment, tools, heavy machinery, railroads, agriculture, and other parts of the economy. All of those losses over the years affected the housing industry, which we now know could be manipulated like any other part, until it collapsed from its very complicated and corrupt finance structures.

Out of that have come the dire straits in which the U.S. economy finds itself.

Americans just don’t make the things they need for living their daily lives. And, they don’t make the things they have been cultivated to want - which has translated into “need” - through advertising and public relations.

There is virtually no place today where the complaint cannot be heard: “I can’t find a thing made in the U.S.A. Don’t we make anything anymore?” The answer is, not much.

The things that are made in America that bring some of the money back into the country are things that do not directly benefit Americans, in general. We export weapons systems, military equipment and armaments, and we export some of our culture - movies and television programming. Most of the cultural exports give a very inaccurate impression of the U.S., to the extent that many people in other countries, especially where their level of education is similar to ours, think that Americans are rich and all live in big houses.

The election last week was said to be a referendum on the economy and the Democrats lost because a large percentage of the electorate believe that it is their fault - they’re the party in power, after all. Anyone who believes that needs to go back to school to study logic.

An industrial economy that took at least 30 years to destroy is not going to be fixed in two years, especially for President Barack Obama, who repeatedly said that he wanted to be a leader who brought the two opposing camps together. Bipartisanship was not in the cards for him or the American people, because, even if his ideas were the best (and they weren’t) the Republicans were not going to allow him to take the first small step toward solving the nation’s problems.

For two years now, they’ve acted like the troll under the bridge, and they promised out loud on election night that they would continue to obstruct and roll back anything that might benefit the people. And, they want to destroy Obama’s presidency. They make no bones about that.

Immelt has said in various forums over the past few years that, perhaps, it was not such a good idea for Corporate America to have shipped manufacturing to other countries, to the point that even mass production of computers - which the U.S. had pioneered and produced in great numbers - has been transferred to other countries. So it goes with most of our manufacturing.

He said in an interview recently in India, where he and President Obama were in the country at the same time (during Obama’s Asia trip), that although it is not going to be possible to put the globalization genie back into the bottle, it is important to put technological development and manufacturing close together.

By that, it is safe to assume that he meant, since America is the place of innovation and creativity, manufacturing should be located close to those centers of innovation. He and we can’t have it both ways. There cannot be a massive return of manufacturing and the tens of millions of jobs that it would bring and have globalization, too. The GE chief seems to be torn, but don’t think that he will make any decisions that will affect his own personal income and wealth or those of GE stockholders. It’s a safe bet that corporations will choose globalization over bringing back 30 million jobs.

The question is, if a bunch of union members and representatives could sit around a table - or at a bar - in 1980 and roughly sketch out what is going to happen in a decade or two if all the jobs are going to be removed from the U.S., why couldn’t a bunch of politicians and corporate heads look ahead and see the same thing?

The people on the ground - the workers - saw clearly what had happened to their own communities and they knew the same thing was in store for the nation. However, Corporate America and many politicians were either hell-bent on destroying unions or were paying lip service to support of workers while doing nothing to help those workers survive. Workers saw the collapse of their local economies in state after state and instinctively knew where America was headed.

In America, however, workers don’t have any credentials in dealing with big issues, while workers in other countries - some in Europe, for example - have their say, both on the job, through their unions, and in the political life of the country. Their experience, skills, knowledge, and leadership mean something. Not surprisingly, those are the countries that are much better off than the U.S. And now, Immelt is beginning to be just a little concerned that the jobs are gone and may not come back for a long time.

As Immelt and the rest of Corporate America fret over the possible impending fully collapsed economy - mostly because of the lack of jobs for the American people - they can look for solutions to the people who know manufacturing, the workers. In the backs of their minds is the knowledge that the only way their wealth and power are protected is if America remains a stable country and their position at the top of the heap is secure.

Maybe, CEO Jeffrey should look around for a conversation about America’s future where there are a few skilled workers still on the job. Maybe, he could buy a round of beer…and learn something.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.