California’s Business Climate

In your Column One “Business’s Gripe With California” (Sept. 12), furniture company executive Joseph Wisniewski makes a characteristically shortsighted remark. He says, “(California) is a great place for us to sell our furniture, but not the best place for us to build it.” It seems that the primary reason why California isn’t a good place to make furniture is that labor costs here are about $2 per hour higher than they are in the state to which Wisniewski’s company will move in 1994.

At the beginning of this century, Henry Ford at least had the intelligence to recognize that paying his workers a decent wage would enable them to buy his cars, thereby benefiting his company in the long run. Today’s business leaders all seem intent on finding a state or country where the workers are as lowly paid and desperate as possible, while seeking markets where workers are relatively well paid.

I do not know whether Wisniewski’s company will prosper after moving out of California. I do know that the business goals he so clearly articulates will not lead our state or the larger society into a prosperous future.

J. KEVIN CROSS, La Jolla