Profitable High-Wage Manufacturing in the US: Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Says How It's Done

At November’s Manufacturing & Technology Show in Cleveland, Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves discussed how the steel producer pays six-figure salaries to entry level workers yet still remains profitable. 

“We don't have a plan for 2050 like other companies do. We have a plan for 2022, another for 2023, 2024 all the way to 2030. Because this is as far as you can go without sounding ridiculous,” Goncalves says. Think about it, he said: 30-year commitments made back in 1991 could not have factored in many of the advances made in the intervening years – such as flip phones or the internet, for example – because they simply didn’t exist or weren’t yet public.