Sometimes, jobs disappear in a headline-grabbing plant closure. But, here’s one that is far more subtle and has grave implications for thousands of jobs and for the Teamsters.

The Financial Times has a front-page story today describing a new trend: U.S maunfacturers and retailers are shifting their “domestic warehouses and distribution facilities to China as they seek to make supply chains more efficient.”

What’s happening is this: more goods are being “sorted, packaged and labelled before leaving China.” That cuts out the need for the goods to land at U.S. warehouses before the goods move on to retailers. A lot of U.S. manufacturers rely on delivery companies, such as UPS, to move their goods: UPS plans on having 50 warehouses in China by the end of 2005, with another 10 set to open next year. Gotta love it: UPS is a unionized company here but, by opening warehouses in China, it is effectively undercutting its U.S. unionized workforce.

“More efficient,” of course means fewer workers. Warehouse workers in China make about $2 an hour, compared to at least $15 an hour in the U.S.–though I imagine that U.S. number is an average or the number which factors in mostly non-union workers; obviously, unionized workers earn more, along with benefits.

I’ve made this point before: without a serious strategy to deal with China, the labor movement cannot hope to stem the downward tide of wages and benefits, not to mention the percentage of workers in unions. Even the Change To Win federation’s strategy to focus on organizing workers not employed in industries directly hit by global trade is going to have serious obstacles because somewhere along the economic chain the influence of China–on energy prices, interest rates, an over-valued dollar–will be felt.